Most of physics is not a great counter-example to learning by invention. There are several ways to derive Newton's three laws. It's a fun exercise in Lagrangian

Most of physics is not a great counter-example to learning by invention. There are several ways to derive Newton's three laws. It's a fun exercise in Lagrangian mechanics. Perhaps quantization or the curvature of space would be better examples as they require prior knowledge of experimental data (assuming we ignore proposed philosophical arguments that stray a bit too far from physics imho.)