The most widely popular 20th-century views of famous architecture usually focus on heroic originality and direct reflection of structural facts, especially new structural innovations and materials. From this perspective, which celebrates difference and material truth, an awful lot of the buildings we have been looking at could look like a plague of uninventive sameness and masquerading falseness. But from the perspective of their makers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, they doubtless represented some more positive realization. I can see many motives for the so-called stream of uninventive sameness in architecture through the centuries. First, people are secure with what they know, especially in turbulent times.
People look around and see deplorable conditions, and easily turn to what they know.
Along the same lines, it is easy to nostalgically and romantically look back on architecture, especially ancient, and feel that it is true and pure. Americans romanticized Greek culture as truly democratic, in adapting a national style. Many times, sameness also got mixed up with nature. If we repeated basic geometric forms over and over, it was only because they are all true forms - they appear in nature, and some architects felt there was no need to improve on that. Still, there are flaws with this line of thinking.