소가 뒷발로
쥐를 잡은 일 처럼
영어 이야기 2264
serendipotous
[sèrəndípətəs]
변형의, 기형의
우연히 일어나는
나는 종종 나 자신이 만든 농담이지만
대단하다는 생각이 들 때가 있디.
영어를 만들려고 세계 각나라를 방문한 사람이
대한민국에 와서 남자 아이 boy와 girl 이라는 낱말을 얻었다.
내가 그들에게 이렇게 말했기 때문이다.
"저기 남자아이 boy 죠?"
그래서 boy 가 태어났는데
그 옆에 있던 사람이 눈이 나빠서인지
"내 눈에는 여자 아이로 보이는 girl..!"
나만 그런것은 아니다.
Just as the discovery of penicillin was a SERENDIPOTOUS accident.
so the discovery of the microwave was a happenso,
페니실린의 발견은 우연한 사건이었던 것은
마이크로 웨이브의 발견 또한 우연한 일이었다.
한국의 속담 "말이 뒷걸음치다 쥐를 잡았다,"를 직역하면
"The horse backs up and catches the rat,"인데
그 말을 영어로 좁 다듬으면 이런 문장이 나올 수도 있다.
It's SERENDIPOTOUS for the lucky horse to catch the rat by mischance.
운이 좋은 말이 재수없는 쥐를 잡는 것은 어쩌다 생긴 것이다.
모든 분야의 중요성을 무시할 수 없으나
심리학과 우주에 대한 주장은 특별나다
Our psychology emerges not as a SERENDIPOTOUS anomaly
but as a mirror to the universe that gave rise to it.
우리의 심리학은 우연한 현상이 아니라
그것을 일으키는 우주의 거울로 나타난다
(Psychology Today, February 19, 2024)
serendipitous 의 언어적 뿌리는
Three Princes of Serendip whose heroes were always making discoveries
by accidents.
유연히 발견하던 영웅이었던
Serendip 의 3명의 왕자들에서
왔다.
The birth of you and me cannot be a SERENDIPOTOUS event but the God's will.
당신과 나의 태어남은 우연적 사건이 아니라 하나님의 뜻이다.
(당신과 나 또한 이 세상에서
모험적인 삶을 살도록 ㅡ)
California Eureka
Three Princes of Serendip" (an English version was published in 1722) whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things
Derek Lusk Ph.D.
Unnatural Selection
The Psychology of the Cosmos
How the governing forces of the universe shape human and organizational life.
Posted February 19, 2024
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
The discovery of penicillin was a serendipitous accident.
(10) The discovery of the microwave was a serendipitous event.
This is not a serendipitous coincidence.
The discovery of America by Columbus was a serendipitous event.
Serendipitous happenstances can lead to remarkable discoveries.
KEY POINTS
But we believe it is more than random and more than serendipitous.
Prepare for meetingsplanned and serendipitousㅡby thinking how you can effectively communicate your story.
The serendipitous meeting with a mentor changed my life.
There are four dynamics in people and the universe: harmony, power, chaos, and order.
About half of all great discoveries are purely serendipitous.
Harmony is about balance. Power is about progress. Chaos concerns change. Order is rules and structure.
In these universal dynamics, we find our deepest held values and meaning and purpose in life.
Source: DALL-E/OpenAI
Source: DALL-E/OpenAI
My dad is a chemist and physicist. I’m a psychologist.
Over the years, our conversations have inspired me to think about the cosmos and consciousness.
I’ve concluded the mind is a manifestation of the universe—not separate from it.
As Carl Sagan said, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.”
The brain is no different: it’s made of star stuff.
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Interestingly, Nietzsche made this point about “the will to power.” He said the search for power extends beyond a psychological phenomenon to the cosmos itself—
that the entire universe is driven by the will to power.
The mind was generated out of nature, the universe, and the cosmos, and it follows the same dynamics found everywhere else.
Wherever you look, on Earth, in the stars, in the galaxies, inside the mind, you will find the will to power.
I agree with Nietzsche regarding the relationship between the cosmos and consciousness.
Our psychology is in a universe predisposed to the emergence of conscious life, capable of marveling at its own existence.
In line, the anthropic principle observes how the laws and constants of the universe are perfectly calibrated and so remarkably벼 precise that consciousness is not just feasible—it’s an inevitable cosmic outcome.
Our psychology emerges not as a serendipitous anomaly but as a mirror to the universe that gave rise to it.
변형, 기형
So, what is this psychology that the universe made? Psychology has found
four high-level dimensions of mental life: harmony, power, chaos, and order.
See Slalom Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Values, Quinn’s Competing Values Framework, Hogan’s Motives Values and Preferences Inventory, and many other taxonomies.
All these frameworks, through empirical research, statistically break down to four principles that are also found in the broader universe.
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Harmony
Harmonic principles guide nature's fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces. They’re perfectly balanced to sustain life, often referred to by physicists as the “fine-tuning” of the universe. For instance, if gravity were slightly stronger or weaker, planetary formations would be drastically different, and life wouldn’t exist. If nuclear force were slightly weaker, hydrogen would be the only stable element in the periodic table—no oxygen for us to breathe or water to drink. But the universe as we know it is just right for oxygen to form in the cores of stars, making life possible on Earth.
In organizations, harmony is unity, cohesiveness, and cooperation. This is also our internal search for inner peace. It is the equilibrium between different elements of life, whereby they complement each other rather than conflict. It’s not going too far in one direction. In relationships, harmony is essential for healthy interactions, and it involves things like empathy, sensitive communication, navigating differences, and mutual respect. It is the peaceful coexistence of diverse groups and balance between individual freedoms and commitment to collective responsibilities. It is a healthy organizational culture.
Power
Power is the capacity to influence and transform. Celestial bodies demonstrate this through gravity. The sun’s pull keeps planets in orbit, while a black hole’s immense gravitational pull can significantly impact nearby stars. The natural tendency of the universe to expand can be seen as a physical manifestation of power, as it exerts itself over the nothingness, filling it with matter and energy. In this way, the cosmos is not static but in a constant state of progress—at an increasing pace.
serendipity (n.)
"faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries," a rare word before 20c., coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann that is dated Jan. 28, 1754, but which apparently was not published until 1833.
Walpole said he formed the word from the Persian fairy tale "The
Three Princes of Serendip" (an English version was published in 1722) whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" [Walpole].
Serendip (also Serendib), attested by 1708 in English, is an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island."
Attention was called to the word in an article in The Saturday Review of June 16, 1877 ["An ungrateful world has probably almost forgotten Horace Walpole's attempt to enrich the English language with the term "Serendipity." etc.]; it begins to turn up in publication 1890s but still is not in Century Dictionary in 1902.
also from 20c.
Entries linking to serendipity
Sri Lanka
large island southeast of India (known in English before 1972 as Ceylon), from Lanka, older name for the island and its chief city, + Sanskrit sri "beauty" (used especially of divinities, kings, heroes, etc.), also an honorific prefix to proper names, from PIE root *kreie- "to be outstanding, brilliant, masterly, beautiful," found in Greek (kreon "lord, master") and Indo-Iranian. Related: Sri Lankan.
serendipitous (adj.)
of discoveries, etc., "made or done by happy accident, unexpected," 1914; see serendipity + -ous. Related: Serendipitously.
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In organizations, power is in the sublime and, as Nietzsche said, striving for excellence. The sublime is encountered when we marvel at something immensely powerful, which can be physical, mental, moral, metaphysical, spiritual, or aesthetic, and is beyond our capacity to comprehend. People can experience this in organizations when there’s a bold, meaningful vision and exceptional leader who stands for something with awe-inspiring moral courage. The sublime is also about confronting challenges that seem insurmountable but still striving against them with a deep sense of agency and passion. It is to be empowered and have rights, to possess autonomy and the ability to galvanize action, overcome, and achieve.
Chaos
The laws of thermodynamics contribute to cosmic unpredictability. The second law of thermodynamics, which posits that the disorder of an isolated system increases over time, suggests chaotic progression at the cosmic scale. Chaos is the default state of the universe. This natural drift toward disorder not only fuels the formation of complex cosmic structures but ensures that the universe is in constant transformation.
LEADERSHIP ESSENTIAL READS
Determination/Flexibility: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Why Leaders Need Flexible Communication Skills
In organizations, just as cosmic chaos leads to the creation of new stars and galaxies, personal chaos can be a catalyst for transformation. Learning something new often means that something wasn’t just added, but an old idea has died. The person has become something new, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. And we’ve all heard how stretching outside our comfort zone, into chaos and unpredictability, is how self-transformation happens.
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Relatedly, the connection between chaos and creativity is well-recognized. Divergent thinking can lead to new discoveries in organizations, much like chaotic cosmic events lead to new forms of celestial phenomena. Artists speak of embracing chaos in their creative process, allowing ideation without the constraints of order, to generate original works of art. In business, it’s embracing chaos to catalyze original ideas for new products, marketing channels, technology advances, and even creative ways to solve operational challenges. As Nietzsche said in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
Order
The drift toward disorder is counteracted by a set of laws that govern everything from the orbits of planets to the behavior of particles. This cosmic order, which manifests in the regular patterns observed in the natural world, from the symmetry of snowflakes to the spiral arms of galaxies, embodies order in the universe. In this sense, the beauty of the universe is not just in its visual splendor but also in its underlying structure, the elegant mathematical principles that underpin space and time.
In organizations, the struggle against entropy mirrors our attempts to bring order to the chaos of daily life, striving to create routines, goals, systems, organizational structure, and processes and procedures. People in organizations also get meaning from order. On an existential level, the search for meaning is largely the quest for a coherent structure. Just as scientists seek to discover the laws that govern the cosmos, individuals seek philosophies, religions, and narratives that provide a framework for making sense of their experiences. Amidst the chaos, there is a purpose to be found.
As Nietzsche said, the fundamental forces in the cosmos are embedded in human psychology. Our consciousness, which can be thought of as the universe within, is made up of harmony, power, chaos, and order. It is here we find our deepest motivations, our strongly held values, our personality dispositions, our everyday psychological needs, our vision for the future, our connection with something greater than ourselves, our engagement with a mission, and our quest for meaning and purpose.