Stumbled Upon

No, my subject heading does not refer to the website.

I'm thinking instead about an argument you hear from Popperians and Hayekians about ethics. They will say that traditional systems of ethics have been "stumbled upon" and kept because they work, or because they work well enough.

"Stumbled upon" sounds clumsy and oafish, in a humorous way, but it's a metaphor, really, with a certain vagueness to it, which makes it hard to say exactly how true it is that a discovery was stumbled upon.

To me, at least, "stumbled upon" sounds particularly jarring in the case of ethics, a topic on which humans have exerted much brain power searching for answers... for practically forever.

Was the golden rule, for example, simply stumbled upon? Did it literally trip someone up who was on their way to do something else? Or was it enunciated after a process of contemplation and abstract thought?

Pasteur said: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind."

Calling discoveries "something on which we stumbled,"
seems like a way to keep the discoverers humbled.
But I would say that whatever you're hoping to find,
your odds are much better if you have a well-prepared mind.