Someone imagined space and time could be a deformed fabric. That was new.
In minor and major ways, new ideas are found or emerge from searches for solutions to problems from science to art. Or exploration of things in new combinations or from a previously untapped viewpoint.
Most people are not looking hard for anything beyond what they know. So not likely to find anything new.
But many people try new things, or try to improve or vary something in a direction that is not easy, and learning something nonobvious and new is the “price” they must pay to succeed. Or a bonus they are paid for pushing through a thicket, even if they don’t succeed at what they set out to do.
General patterns don’t actually exist. We create a pattern from multiple observations.
What is the point in saying there is nothing new,? So the word “new” is like “utopia”, with only a mythical aspirational meaning?
History has never stopped proving how inane such an utterly unsupported opinion is.
Just keep up with quantum physics. Constantly finding new strange counterintuitive effects that require intense research and explorations of combinations of ideas and imagination to envision. And then challenging invention of new highly artificially controlled conditions, not found in nature, to create.
Mathematics as a profession is all about discovery of new things (from exploration) and invention (from imaginative questions and quests).
Art produces new things all the time, but you have to have familiarity with art to see what is new. If all you see are materials and color you are not literate enough to read it. Anymore than a unique story is “just words”.
For that matter, in slower timescales, nature has never stopped creating new creatures with new attributes or behaviors.
Perhaps have you set your own sights much too low. Try doing something nobody has been able to do before, and sticking with it. You will discover something if you really do stick with it. Even understanding the barriers better than before reveals things, and forces new concepts into being.
Someone imagined space and time could be a deformed fabric. That was new.
In minor and major ways, new ideas are found or emerge from searches for solutions to problems from science to art. Or exploration of things in new combinations or from a previously untapped viewpoint.
Most people are not looking hard for anything beyond what they know. So not likely to find anything new.
But many people try new things, or try to improve or vary something in a direction that is not easy, and learning something nonobvious and new is the “price” they must pay to succeed. Or a bonus they are paid for pushing through a thicket, even if they don’t succeed at what they set out to do.