Originally Posted By: Ellis
....are we merely labeling them and their influences as they affect us, or are we discovering them, or are we inventing them? Or don't we know?...
It depends. Basically, the inventions and technical development cannot be predicted, planned the less - but for example the existence of Moore's Law demonstrates clearly, many aspects of social evolution are of objective character and as such they just follow energetic requirements of the society. This is the more true, the larger the society is and the better the random, subjective factors are averaged.

For example, if Einstein wouldn't derive special/general relativity himself, Poincare/Hilbert would do it in few years, if not few months time-frame as well - society was prepared for such invention. The proposal of Aether Wave Theory is nothing surprising from such perspective as well: many indicia of particle-like nature of Universe are known already. The AWT could be proposed before one hundred years without problem, because it's simple and it doesn't depend on mainstream physics inventions and theories - only physics of Victorian era.