The crux of creativity resides in the ability to manufacture variation on a theme  If we look at the history of science, for instance, we see that every idea is built upon a thousand related ideas
Careful analysis leads us to understand that what we choose to call a new theme or a new discovery is itself always and without exception some sort of variation, on a deep level, of previous themes
Some new scientific discoveries do not represent, on a deep level, a variation on previous themes.