Comment by sixtyj
Connections: Alternative History of Technology by James Burke documents these "coincidences".
Connections: Alternative History of Technology by James Burke documents these "coincidences".
Some of those really are coincidences, like "Person A couldn't find their left shoe and ended up in London at a coffee house, where Person B accidentally ended up when their carriage hit a wall, which lead to them eventually coming up with Invention C" for example.
Although from what I remember from the TV show, most of what he investigates/talks about is indeed path dependence in one way or another, although not everything was like that.
Those "coincidences" in Connections are really no coincidence at all, but path dependence. Breakthrough advance A is impossible or useless without prerequisites B and C and economic conditions D, but once B and C and D are in place, A becomes obvious next step.