Serendipity
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Since 1986 Darwin College, Cambridge has organised a series of annual public lectures built around a single theme approached in a multi-disciplinary way. These essays were developed from the 2008 lectures, which explored the idea of serendipity - the relationship between good fortune and the preparation of the mind to spot and exploit it. Serendipity is an appealing concept, and one which has been surprisingly influential in a great number of areas of human discovery. The essays collected in this volume provide insightful and entertaining accounts of the relationship between serendipity and knowledge, in the human and natural sciences. Written by some of the most eminent thinkers of this generation, Serendipity explores a variety of subjects, including disease, politics, scientific invention and the art of writing. This collection will fascinate and inspire a wide range of readers, highlighting the multifaceted nature of the popular, but elusive, concept of serendipity.
Iain Morley
Iain Morley is Academic Coordinator of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. He has been Lecturer in Palaeoanthropology and Director of the degree in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and was formerly a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. He has produced numerous articles and books, including Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material (Cambridge, 2008), Spiritual Culture and Image and Imagination: A Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation (2007), and The Prehistory of Music: Human Evolution, Archaeology and the Origins of Musicality (2013).
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