Errors, mishaps and discoveries are all interesting and frequently unintentional. Let's call errors "mistakes". They can be physical mistakes as when I hit the wrong key. I am surprised at how often I have my finger tip over a pair of Ipad choices and looking right at the one I want, my finger strikes the other one. I suspect a momentary lapse of focus but I don't know why that happens.
Let's call unwanted outside influences that cause trouble "mishaps". Like when an earthquake shakes the salad dressing and spills it over the table top. Let's call a fortuitous unplanned event a "discovery". I know that finding the newspaper deliverer tossed the newspaper (what's a newspaper?) on the porch roof instead of the porch floor is a discovery too, but I want to reserve "discovery" for something that seems positive, at least at the time.
Lynn is a potter and sometimes things don't go as planned in that art:
Here two items were accidentally placed in the kiln touching each other. The glazes are a type of glass and the unwanted bond between a small vase and a mug is very strong. If we put a pencil in the vase, we could provide a poke in the eye along with coffee or tea. Demand for that combination is estimated to be quite weak.
One of the many limitations of human intelligence and judgment is that finding a positive discovery, like a good drug combination or a better way to do something, may turn out in 600 years to be a bother, a danger or worse. We can't see very far into the future and we sure can't foresee all the interactions between habits, laws, devices. Lead seems good until we find having it in dinner plates and auto fuel isn't good.
