Notes on Finding as Invention as Discovery as Creation

I'd earlier flagged the obvious relation between the German finden (find) and erfinden (invent), and mused about a somewhat analogous relation between the English words 'find' and 'invent'.

I took this to be coincidental, but it happens that there is also an analogous relation between the German words for 'invent' and 'discover' -- erfinden and entdecken. According to the Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm online, erfinden (invent) was distinguished from entdecken (discover) by around the time of Goethe (at the latest). [1] But earlier (before this distinction was invented, so to speak), the two words were more or less synonymous, so that one might have said something like "as we set out to invent (i.e., discover) new islands..." [2]

Then there is the German schaffen (create) and its relatives schöpfen (to scoop) and the English 'shape'. Additionally, the German terms had both earlier been synonymous with machen (make). [3]

I just want to have these associations in mind (as we can be sure Nietzsche did) in trying to make out what Nietzsche takes "creating values" to consist in.

One substantive point probably worth making here: These associations seem to create even more space for the products of Nietzsche's finding/invention/discovery/creation to be real and objective in the sense required by at least some species of value realism. Edmundo O'Gorman's argument is at least suggestive of one line of possibilities:

"Discovery" implies that the nature of the thing found was previously known to the finder, i.e., that he knows that objects such as the one he has found can and do exist although the existence of that particular one was wholly unknown. Thus an astronomer who is already aware that some heavenly bodies are classed as planets may be said to have "discovered" a planet when he detects for the first time one of those bodies. But the astronomer who first has the conception of such bodies as "planets" may be said to have "invented" that class of heavenly bodies, since it was he who formulated for the first time the concept itself. [4]

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NOTES

1. The DW entry quotes this passage of Goethe's: "[Z]um entdecken gehört glück, zum erfinden geist, und beide können beides nicht entbehren." Roughly, "To discover wants luck, to invent genius, and neither can do without either."

2. The example in the DW entry: "als wir zů erfinden [i.e., entdecken] neuwe inseln ausfůren."

3. My German wasn't quite up to a translation here, but I'm confident I've captured the rough sense of the passage in the DW: "urverwandt ist es mit 'schöpfen', mit dem es in den formen ahd.mhd. schepfen, ndl. scheppen zusammenfällt (vergl. schöpfen) und zuweilen begegnet noch in der ältern nhd. periode schöpfen für schaffen in der bedeutung 'machen'." 

4. O'Gorman, Edmundo, The Invention of America: An Inquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of Its History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1959), as quoted in Dirlik, Arif, What is in a Rim?: Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea. Rowman & Littlefield (1998). At 21 (visited December 4, 2008).