a thing i think is probably happening and significant in such cases: developing good ‘concepts/ideas’ to handle a problem, ‘getting a feel for what’s going on in a (conceptual) situation’
a plausibly analogous thing in humanity(-seen-as-a-single-thinker): humanity states a conjecture in mathematics, spends centuries playing around with related things (tho paying some attention to that conjecture), building up mathematical machinery/understanding, until a proof of the conjecture almost just falls out of the machinery/understanding
a thing i think is probably happening and significant in such cases: developing good ‘concepts/ideas’ to handle a problem, ‘getting a feel for what’s going on in a (conceptual) situation’
a plausibly analogous thing in humanity(-seen-as-a-single-thinker): humanity states a conjecture in mathematics, spends centuries playing around with related things (tho paying some attention to that conjecture), building up mathematical machinery/understanding, until a proof of the conjecture almost just falls out of the machinery/understanding