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Unexpected discoveries
These are discoveries that are unplanned, sudden, and seemingly occur without planning or forethought. Much of what we take for granted in life and in our ways of thinking have occured because of the unplanned or unexpected discovery. The modern nation of Sri Lanka, was once called Serendip, a contraction of 'Serendipity' meaning the happy circumstance, or the happy coincidence. Why? One version has it that Ceylon, another name for Sri Lanka when under British colonial rule, was a f'ortunate discovery' because of the beauty of its diverse people, landscapes, flora and fauna. Penicillin For example, the discovery of penicillin resulted from the unexpected outcome of an experiment conducted by Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928. He showed that, if Penicillium rubens were grown in the appropriate substrate, it would exude a substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin. This serendipitous observation began the modern era of antibiotic discovery. The development of penicillin for use as a medicine is attributed to the Australian Nobel laureate Howard Walter Florey, together with the German Nobel laureate Ernst Chain and the English biochemist Norman Heatley. Fleming recounted that the date of his discovery of penicillin was on the morning of Friday, September 28, 1928. It was a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary's Hospital in London (now part of Imperial College), Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus plate culture he mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and caused lysing of the bacteria. He grew a pure culture and discovered it was a Penicillium mould, now known to bePenicillium notatum. (Wikipedia - Penicillin) Love The most enduring of all unplanned discoveries is the discovery of love. It is the mystery of love, more than any other human experience, that drives often complex and compelling narratives of every form and flavour. Discovery of unplanned love has been and, it seems from the on-going mass appeal of romance stories and reality TV shows, will continue to be of enduring interest to audiences for a long time to come. In the West, we can trace interest in the Romance genre as far back as the first recorded writings, but the Medieval period popularised the genre and in it we find echoes of our own cultural schemata in its obsession with knights, damsels in distress, courtly love, and strict codes of honour. The theories that seek to explain unplanned romantic love are as countless as the ways we have developed to homage the feeling of, 'being in love.' Exploration
Our set text, The Motorcycle Diaires is a narrative about the possibilites of exploration undertaken by any intrepid adventurer. In a world that appears to be ever shrinking because of the reach and influence of global communications and travel technologies, we may feel tempted to give up on adventure and mistakingly assume that every thing has already been explored, analysed, written about, and posted on Facebook. We may never question the assumptions and beliefs that together may entrap our thinking and understanding of our world and our place within that world. A powerful argument for a lifetime of exploration and the discoveries we can make are the accounts of those who have gone before us; not every mystery has been tasted, nor has every discovey revealed. Nature and travel documentatries on 'Discovery' channel make this fact plain every day of every week. All we need to do is break the bonds of our own prison walls to reach our own discoveries. |