It sounds like the opening of either a Sherlock Holmes story or a Shakespearean tragedy. Two British businessmen take on a US commercial behemothOriginally a monster described in the Bible, today the term is used to describe anything large, unwieldy and potentially dangerous.. The struggle engulfs their lives for over a decade.

Finally, they win their David and GoliathAccording to the Hebrew Bible, Goliath was a giant who fought the Israelites on the side of the Philistines. David, a young Israelite shepherd, killed Goliath with his slingshot. With their champion dead, the Philistines were routed. fight and look forward to returning to their lives - only to perish in separate freak accidents within days of each other.

That is the tragic tale of Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain. Lynch went missing early this week when his superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily.

Not long afterwards, Chamberlain was hit by a car while running in Cambridgeshire, and later died in hospital.¹

Their case began in 2011 when Lynch sold his IT company Autonomy, of which Chamberlain was vice-president of finance, to US computing giant HP for $11bn (£8.5bn). A year later, HP determined that the company was only worth just over two billion dollars and accused the pair of fraud.²

Lynch and Chamberlain countered that HP had not done its homework and mismanaged the takeover.

After winning the case in June, Lynch said he was looking forward to getting back to his family and his work. Indeed, he was on the yacht to celebrate his win, throwing a party for his friends.³

The tragedy has some asking if destiny really does exist. Throughout history, human beings have blamed both nature and divine reasons for misfortune.

In ancient Greece, it was believed that every being had been assigned a destiny by the laws of the universe.

This was represented by the figures of the Three Fates: Clotho, who spun out the thread of each being's life; Lachesis, who measured its length, and Atropos, who cut the thread when a being was due to die. Even the gods could not interfere with their work.⁴

Fate is often compared with fortuna, fortune. The Italian thinker Niccolo Machiavelli described fortune as the workings of random chance that can raise us up or strike us down, and is completely beyond our control.

Today, most neuroscientistsA scientist who studies the brain and the nervous system.  think our faith in fate is really a byproduct of our evolution. Early human beings benefited from being able to recognise patterns in the world around them: this enabled them to predict the migration paths of animals and the coming and going of the seasons.

This occurs in the neocortex, the outer layer of the brain, which is found only in mammals and is especially well-developed in humans.

However, this pattern-forming part of our brain can sometimes mislead us by identifying patterns that are not really there.

Psychologists are also divided on whether or not this pattern-spotting ability is good for us. Some say that believing that events are predetermined can help make us more confident.⁵

It means when we walk into an exam or an interview, we can tell ourselves the result is already decided. That can give us the boost in self-belief we need to do well.

But the flipside of this coin is fatalism: the belief that there is no point in striving for anything, as we cannot do anything to affect whether or not we succeed.

One study found that the more important a task is, the more likely we are to believe its outcome is the result of fate.⁶

Is there such a thing as fate?

Yes: We know that the universe is ruled by iron laws. It would be the height of arrogance to think the rules that move planets do not apply to us. Events like this seem to prove the universe has a plan for us - whether good or bad.

No: What we call fate is nothing but an illusion of our pattern-seeking primate brains. The world is ruled by randomness: it is the making of some of us and the ruin of others.

Or... Something called "fate" may or may not exist in the universe. But our belief in fate, or lack of it, can be very consequential in our own lives.

FOR YOUR SUMMER READING CHALLENGE CLUE GO TO STEP SIX IN THE SIX STEPS TO DISCOVERY BELOW.