But transformations are also finite and countable. A scrupulous analysis of both banal and original objects and works can reveal recurrent structures on which they are based, whatever different their surface manifestations can be. Here alchemy converges with structuralism, philosophy of history with psychoanalysis, popular wisdom with exact sciences. In any of these cases, the attention shifts from the striking, unexpected and novel to the recurrent, anticipated, and old. The dialectics of new and old thus applies not only to the material but also to the principles of its transformation. Plurality is reduced to recurrence; that what appeared utterly new turns out to be only a variation of an old theme. Newton's discovery of the law of gravity, Jung's theory of the archetypes of human psyche and Propp's (Propp, Wagner and Scott, 1969) analysis of the morphology of fairy tales all follow this line. This also applies to the study of history and sociology which reveal cycles and other forms of recurrent patterns in civilizations and societies (Sorokin, 1957; Sztompka, 1993). Even the study of creativity that is based on the presumption of novelty aims to reveal the universal laws of its generation and to explain how original works are produced by using the old material and known procedures.
To conclude, originality is not a decisive feature of creative work and novelty in creativity is always based on what has been created before. Moreover, perception of what is new is context dependent - novelty is recognized in contrast with what is considered old; the same thing can be perceived as either new or old depending, using a term from Gestalt theory, on how the figure/ground border is drawn. At the temporal plane, the perception of novelty depends on the difference between the perceived object and its antecedents. Novelty is thus a function of change. The old can become the new again if it is preceded by something different; hence the phenomenon of recurrence. Therefore, the concept of novelty should not be taken for granted; levels, aspects and types of novelty should be distinguished.
A historical approach to novelty implies that it is understood in terms of contrast (with a context) and transformation (of what was borrowed). Borrowing and recurring structures are considered as the elements of novelty production. The dialectics of the old and the new in creativity accounts for both continuity and discontinuity in the historical process
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