Does man discover or create?

If you turn on a conventional oven that is gas powered, you turn the knob, and select a temperature, typically somewhere between 300 and 450 degrees. You wait for the oven to power up to your choice of temperature, place the item you want to cook or bake in the oven, set the time, then wait. If your oven is configured exactly as those of a thousand of your neighbors, the item that you bake or cook will come out about exactly the same as those of those other thousand neighbors. If you bake the same item a thousand items, it will come out about exactly the same every single time.

The oven? made by man. The gas that powers the oven, that makes the oven work the same every single time, and properties of the gas? Only discovered by man, always had been in existence while man lived in caves, feasted on beets, and risked his life killing mammoths for food, all of that when instead, he could have had oven baked cakes and oven roasted lamb.

Suppose your oven is powered by electricity. Well, Faraday discovered electricity, meaning electricity already existed, only was discovered by Faraday. We arrive then, yet again at the inference that the most important ingredient for working of the electric oven — electricity — was not created by man, only is discovered and harnessed by man.

Whether it be the law of gravity (as it applies, for instance, to aeroplanes) or laws of motion (as applies, for instance, to cars) or law of relativity (as applies, for instance, to space travel) there is nothing new that is produced by man that, in entirety, is creation of man. Quite the contrary, every new principle or gadget that is produced by man evinces discovery of a principle that always had been, but yet, hitherto had remained hidden to consciousness of man.

Perhaps, your mind wonders about the internet and the cell phone. Well, the internet, the land line, and the cell phone, all made possible by electromagnetic waves. Did man invent electromagnetic waves? Absolutely not! Electromagnetic waves always have been, only have been discovered, then harnessed by man for enhancement of enjoyment of life on earth.

Whenever we assert that man is creative, in reality, we assert that man has capacity for discovery of principles that, hitherto, had been hidden, but which somehow via exercise of effort born out…