Ielts reading question-type based tests true false not given matching headings

viii 
Reality doesn’t always match expectation 
ix 
How the word came into being 
x 
Illustration of serendipity in the business sector
 
A. 
A paradox lies close to the heart of scientific discovery. If you know just what you are looking for, 
finding it can hardly count as a discovery, since it was fully anticipated. But if, on the other hand, you have 
no notion of what you are looking for, you cannot know when you have found it, and discovery, as such, is 
out of the question. In the philosophy of science, these extremes map onto the purist forms of deductivism 
and inductivism: In the former, the outcome is supposed to be logically contained in the premises you start 
with; in the latter, you are recommended to start with no expectations whatsoever and see what 
turns up. 
 
B. 
As in so many things, the ideal position is widely supposed to reside somewhere in between these two 
impossible-to-realise extremes. You want to have a good enough idea of what you are looking for to be 
surprised when you find something else of value, and you want to be ignorant enough of your end 
point that you can entertain alternative outcomes. Scientific discovery should, therefore, have an accidental 
aspect, but not too much of one. Serendipity is a word that expresses a position something like that. It’s a 
fascinating word, and the late Robert King Merton—“the father of the sociology of science”—liked it 
well enough to compose its biography, assisted by the French cultural historian Elinor Barber. 
 
C. 
The word did not appear in the published literature until the early 19
th
century and did not become well 
enough known to use without explanation until sometime in the first third of the 20th century. Serendipity 
means a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”, specifically, the accident of finding something good or 
useful without looking for it. The first noted use of “serendipity” in the English language was by Horace 
Walpole. He explained that it came from the fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip (the ancient 
name for Ceylon, or present day Sri Lanka), whose heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents 
and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of’. 
D. 
Antiquarians, following Walpole, found use for it, as they were always rummaging about for curiosities, 
and unexpected but pleasant surprises were not unknown to them. Some people just seemed to have a knack 
for that sort of thing, and serendipity was used to express that special capacity. The other community that 
came to dwell on serendipity to say something important about their practice was that of scientists, and here 
usages cut to the heart of the matter and were often vigorously contested. Many scientists, including the 
Flarvard physiologist Walter Cannon and, later, the British immunologist Peter Medawar, liked to emphasise 
how much of scientific discovery was unplanned and even accidental. One of the examples is Hans Christian 
Orsted’s discovery of electromagnetism when he unintentionally brought a currentcarrying wire parallel to a 

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