“Rediscovered” and the loose meaning

Suppose:

Economist A in 1920 develops a theory about labor markets.

Then:

Historian B in 2020 independently develops an explanation of nineteenth-century labor transformation that happens to use a similar mechanism.

It would be misleading to say that B “rediscovered A's historical explanation” if B had never encountered A.

A better description is:

Historian B independently developed a similar analytical idea and later connected it to historical evidence.

“Rediscovered” is therefore sometimes used loosely to mean that an older idea becomes independently recognized or becomes useful again.

The quotation marks were meant to signal that this is not literal rediscovery.