6. Glossary

Serendipity

Christian Vanden Berghen's definition (2005): the art of putting oneself in a position to discover something (an item of information, a drug, a technique) when one is not working directly on the subject.

"Serendipity is often defined as the ability to discover things by chance. In reality, discoveries are not really made by chance. They are made possible because the person who makes these discoveries has put himself in a certain state of mind composed of openness, availability, curiosity, wonder, astonishment and analogical and symbolic thinking, the kind that allows us to see what unites rather than what divides."