Is it helpful to differentiate Discovery vs. Invention?
When a scientist discovers a physical behavior, or a oceanographer a new species, it's a discovery that others could make. The phenomena exists, they happened to find it first.
When a composer invents, they are likely creating music that no other human would have created. If they hadn't composed it, it would never have existed.
Both of these activities seem to require an independent mind to be successful. Are they related? Or fundamentally different in some way?
You could frame it as discovery being finding something out about the thing. So you find out the color of the trees in fall, the sun that an asteroid is about to fall into, or a person's name.
For invention, you are usually deliberately creating it. Your composer works on the music to become better, and chooses better chords to play. The programmer modifies his code to fix an issue he noticed, thus making the invention better.
I think they are separate. Even if they are 100% related, all from the same factors of psychology, it would still be useful to differentiate them.
If you reference it to the world and its inherent chaos it is an invention. If you reference it to a structure with labels and a finite number of alterations it is a discovery of a part of that structure
Evolution is inherently chaotic, yet new species are "discovered," not "invented." Coming back to songs, most chart hits are cobbled together from samples and prior works. It's unclear whether we can all these new creations that occurred in isolation.
You are right, species are discovered when in reference to our defined concept of what it means to be a spiece, that is a structure with all other spiecies. However it's name is an invention, as all definitions are invented.
Yes the song example can be put on a scale, but even the most plagerised of works can call it an invention to an extent when referencing a newly created title.
On a side note, since we all share the most primitive source of information, all behaviours are indirectly stolen on one level or another. But that idea doesn't contribute alot of practicality
When a scientist discovers a physical behavior, or a oceanographer a new species, it's a discovery that others could make. The phenomena exists, they happened to find it first.
When a composer invents, they are likely creating music that no other human would have created. If they hadn't composed it, it would never have existed.
Both of these activities seem to require an independent mind to be successful. Are they related? Or fundamentally different in some way?