[hobobaggins]

Ah, yes, Everything that can be invented has been invented. - apocryphally attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office way back in 1889.

This is a myth. Just because you don't really see blinding insight every day doesn't mean it doesn't exist (and it's more spectacular when you do see it!)

Another reason that this seems to happen is that innovation and invention tend to happen in more esoteric and technical realms today, and so they're only really fully understood by experts in that field.

[jhbadger]

I happen to actually be a a computational biologist whose work could be considered "esoteric and technical" and whose papers are only fully understood by others in my field. But the fact is every paper of mine (and everybody else's) has 50 to 100 references. Because research is pretty much just reusing existing knowledge in the papers cited. The main source of "innovation", if it can be called that, is taking an idea from another field and applying it to your own. The idea of a scientist or inventor who comes up with an idea completely out the blue with no context is common in fiction, but that isn't how it works in reality.

[galdosdi]

Even Charles Duell wasn't speaking originally here:

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

- Ecclesiastes 1:9 (circa 250 BC)