In rares cases, of course, it may take great pains to establish a new complicated tertium comparationis to see a similarity (Newton discovering the similarity between the movement of the apple and of the heavenly bodies, Eliot discovering the similarity between cruelty and the growth of April flowers) but this hardly implies that the similarity was not there before. Of course, artists will rage against this conclusion, for it does not imply that the work of art is not their creation, was it already in some sense a possibility before they effort? This is probably – if we for a moment allows ourselves the Nietzschean pleasure of getting personal – one of the reasons why it is so hard for many to give up the idea of similarities as something constructed: by doing so, one also gives up the self-flattering romantic-nihilist idea of the subject as artist, as genius, as creative Übermensch
F. Stjernfelt, p. 57, Diagrammatology, Springer (2007)