I'm struggling to answer this the best I can, but I hope this clears some things up. In the context that you are asking about, no this did not happen in that kind of way, unless there is some instance I am totally clueless about. Character creation went through various stages, stemming from oracle bone pictographs, and they were semi-standardized. There are, however, characters that have changed or adapted their meaning throughout time, especially in modernity. 电 for example has the meaning of lightning (it can be more closely seen in the traditional variant 電 which consists of 电 lightning and 雨 rain). But, 电 is also an often used component in words for electrical devices and things with electricity: 电脑 for computer, 电视 for television, 电影 for movies, etc. 车 (traditional 車) has the traditional meaning of a two wheeled cart. But it has also been adapted to serve in the word for a train/locomotive 火车, for an automobile 汽车, etc.

The closest instance I can think of was when characters were deliberately created along those principles was when Wu Zetian (reigned 690-705 CE) promulgated a small set of characters to replace existing ones.

For example the character 照 zhao "to shine" (which is still used today) was replaced with the glyph 曌, made up of the existing glyphs 明 "bright", and 空 "sky", presumably because to shine would be to be like the sun 日 and the moon 月 shining brightly (明) in the sky (空).

But note that this is just replacing one character form with another, not the creation from scratch of a new character. The preferred method of coining words for new concepts in Chinese, as in most other languages, is through concatenation of existing morphemes and words. (e.g. in English "3d printer" is made up of "3d" and "printer")

I have to agree with the earlier comments. Many of China's philosophies (schools of thought, to be more accurate) -- particularly those that developed during the Hundred Schools of Thought period -- were not original. Confucianism is a collection of rituals, practices, mores, and principles taken from the Zhou elite. Confucius takes pains to say that he was not creating something new but simply collating the values and philosophy of his ancestors. The same thing is true of Legalism (main proponents Shang Yang and Han Fei Zi) and Mohism (Mo Zi) and Daoism (Zhuang Zi and Lao Zi).

As such it wasn't necessary to coin new words. As much as possible, philosophers would use terms that were already well understood. Confucius does not coin a new term to refer to the gentleman (君子) and the small/petty man (小人). The same can be seen in his use of 天命 (Mandate of Heaven). It reflects the pre-dynastic sky worship in the central plains.

Edit: I forgot to add a bit of trivia regarding the formation of borrowed words in Chinese. Instead of creating a new word, the common practice (especially in areas with close contact with foreign languages) is to use Chinese words that sound similar to the borrowed word. For example, it is not uncommon to hear the Cantonese use the words "土司" to refer to toast.