Humankind, says a noted scientist, is like the lowly turtle:
we inch forward only if we stick our necks out and take chances.
“What is life
but a series of inspired follies? The
difficulty is to find them to do. Never
lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.”
George Bernard Shaw.
It is never
entirely in fashion to mention luck in the same breath as science. Science is considered a rational endeavour,
and the investigator is supposed to make discoveries for logical reasons by
virtue of his own intellectual hard work.
As everyone no doubt knows, however, discoveries do come about through
chance, but this fact becomes more impressive only when it happens to you
personally.
Much that is
really novel in our creative efforts will still be decided at the pivotal
moment when we confront chance. Like the lowly turtle, man, too lurches
forward only if he first sticks his neck out and chances the consequences.
What is chance? Dictionaries define it as something
fortuitous that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention. Chance is unintentional and capricious, but
we needn’t conclude that chance is immune from human intervention. Indeed, chance plays several distinct roles
when humans react creatively with one another and with their environment.
We can
readily distinguish four varieties of chances if we consider that they each
involve a different kind of motor activity.
The varieties of chance also involve distinctive personality traits and
differ in the way one particular individual influences them.
Chance I is the pure blind luck that comes
with no effort on our part. If, for
example, you are sitting at a “Karata” table of four, it’s “in the cards” for
you to receive a hand of all 13 spades, but it will come up only once in every
6.3 trillion deals. You will ultimately
draw this lucky hand – with no intervention on your part – but it does involve
a longer wait than most of us have time for on this earth.
Chance II evokes the kind of luck Charles
Kettering had in mind when he said; “keep on going and the chances are you will
stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.”
In the sense referred to here, chance
2 is not passive, but springs from an energetic, generalized motor
activity. A certain basal level of
action “stirs up the pot,” brings in random ideas that will collide and stick
together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate. When someone, anyone, does swing into motion
and keeps on going, he will increase the number of collisions between
events. When a few events are linked
together, they can then be exploited to have a fortuitous outcome, but many
others, of course, cannot. Kettering
In the two
previous examples, a unique role of the individual person was either lacking or
minimal. Accordingly, as we move on to Chance 3, we see blind luck, but in
camouflag. Chance presents the clue, the
opportunity exists, but it would be missed except by that one person uniquely
equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its
significance. Chance 3 involves a special receptivity and discernment unique to
the recipient. Louis Pasteur
characterized it for all time when he said: “Chance favours only the prepared mind”.
Pasteur
himself had it full measure. But the
classic example of his principle occurred in 1928, when Alexander Fleming’s
mind instantly fused at least five elements into a conceptually unified
nexus. His mental sequences went
something like this:-
(1)
I see that a mold has fallen by accident into my
culture dish:
(2)
The staphylococcal colonies residing near it failed to
grow:
(3)
The mold must have secreted something that killed the
bacteria:
(4)
I recall a similar experience once before;
(5)
If I could separate this new “something” from the
mold, it could be used to kill staphylococci that cause human infections.
Actually,
Fleming’s mind was exceptionally well prepared for the penicillin mold. Six years earlier, while he was suffering
from a cold, his own nasal dripping had found their way onto a culture dish,
for reasons not made entirely clear. He
noted that nearby bacteria were killed, and astutely followed up the lead. His observations led him to discover a bactericidal enzyme present
in nasal mucus and tears called lysozyme.
Lysozyme proved too weak to be of medical use, but imagine how receptive
Fleming’s mind was to penicillin mold when it later happened on the scene!
One word
evokes the quality of the operations involved in the first three kinds of
chance. It is serendipity. The term
describes the facility for encountering unexpected good luck, as the result of:
accident (chance 1.) general exploratory behavior (chance 2, or sagacity. (chance 3). The word itself was coined by the
Englishman-of-letters Horace Walpole in 1754.
He used it with reference to the legendary tales of the three Princes of
Serendip (Ceylon Walpole
There remains
a fourth element in good luck, an unintentional but subtle personal prompting
of it. The English Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli summed up the principle underlying chance 4 when he noted
that “we make our fortunes and we call them fate.” Disraeli, a politician of considerable
practical experience, appreciated that we
each shape our own destiny, at least to some degree. One might restate the principle as
follows: Chance favours the individualized action.
In chance 4 the kind of luck is peculiar
to one person, and like a personal hobby, it takes on a distinctive individual
flavour. This form of chance is
one-man-made, and it is as personal as a signature. Indeed, it is to motor behaviour what Chance
3 is to sensory receptivity. But Chance
4 connotes no generalized activity, as bees might have in the anonymity of a
hive. Instead, it comprehends a discrete behavioural performance
focused in a unique manner.
Chance 4 has
an elusive, almost mirage-like, quality.
Like a mirage, it is difficult to get a firm grip on, for it tends to
recede as we pursue it and advance as we step back. But we still accept a mirage when we see it,
because we vaguely understand the basis for the phenomenon. A strongly heated layer of air, less dense
than usual, lies next to the earth, and it bends the light rays as they pass
through. The resulting image may be
magnified as if by a telescopic lens in the atmosphere, and real objects,
ordinarily hidden far out of sight over the horizon, are brought forward and
reveal to the eye. What happens in a
mirage then, and in this form of chance, not only appears far-fetched but
indeed is farfetched.
Accordingly one may introduce the
term altamirage to identify the quality underlying Chance 4. Let us define it as the facility for
encountering unexpected good luck as the result of highly individualized
action. Altamirage goes well beyond the
boundaries of serendipity in its emphasis on the role of personal action in
chance.
Chance 4 is favoured by distinctive,
if nor eccentric, hobbies, personal life-styles, mode of behaviour peculiar to
one individual, usually invested with some passion. The farther apart these personal activities
are from the area under investigation, the more novel and unexpected will be
the creative product of the encounter.
CONCLUSION
Why do we still remember men like
Fleming? We venerate them not as
scientists alone. As men, their total
contribution transcends their scientific discoveries. In
their lives we see demonstrated how malleable our own futures are. In their work we perceive how many loopholes
fate has left us-how much of destiny is still in our hands. In them we find that nothing is predetermined. Chance can be on our side, if we but stir it
up with our energies, stay receptive to its every random opportunity, and
continually provoke it by individuality in our endeavours and our approach to
life.
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