Great scientific theories ...come out of the minds of men
And where did t h o s e men come from ? Have you met anybody ? ( because I have not...) 
Why they were born 1800 years before the time they "normally" would ? ( Archimedes was, intellectually, contemporary to Newton and Leibniz ).
My short list of more recent Greats:
Charles Darwin
James Clerk Maxwell
Michael Faraday
Werner Heisenberg
Albert Einstein
Norbert Wiener
Alan Turing
John von Neumann
Ivan Sutherland
James J. Gibson (I met his wife, who also did good research.)
Vernon Mountcastle
Hubel & Wiesel (I met Wiesel.)
Jumps between similar knots are shorter than those between dissimilar knots.
You still do not get it.
There is no comparison, no linear relation, no "similarity" between common and great knots, and, of course, not between great knots.
The real question is "Is this knot great?" because that's the only superlative you deal with in art.
There is no comparison, no linear relation, no "similarity" between common and great knots, and, of course, not between great knots. Gleipnir is not "similar" to the bowline and to the Sheepshank,
Forgive me if I'm telling you something you may already know: Gleipnir-like knots exhibit the principle of 'tensegrity', in fact they are the simplest useful system that I've come across that does so.
Wikipedia:
"
Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression, is a
structural principle based on the use of isolated components in compression inside a net of continuous tension, in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other and the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially.
The term tensegrity was coined by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s"
In Gleipnir-like knots, the cords inside the nub are elements under compression within a circuit of continuous tension; thus these binds apply 'tensegrity' inside a very simple structural arrangement. Tensegrity structures are usually built with struts as compressive elements & cables as tensional elements, but there's no reason to confine the principle to apply only to struts & cables.
I hear it coming:
A f t e r it [Gleipnir] has been discovered, and only b e c a u s e it has been discovered, we can scratch our heads and try to figure out ad-hoc "similarities", and sort / "explain" everything in a simple, "comprehensible" way that will make us feel good...
That's how science works. Sometimes people make new observations and check to see if preexisting theories & principles account for it. At other times, people make predictions & run experiments to verify them. It's called the scientific method.
My take is that Gleipnir's author had an intuition that: 'Hey, this might just work.' He tied the knot & started testing it (running an experiment) and was amazed by how well it worked. He was not a research mechanical engineer specializing in knots, so his initial idea was based on intuition, derived from experience working with knots, rather than an engineering theory. Since the knot was not derived from theory it was only natural for him & others to seek out a better understanding of how it worked, after the fact.
Personally, I am somehow modest regarding this, when I declare that I would nt been able to discover Gleipni even after 1000 years !
You're either being humble, over estimate what it takes to see things in a different way, or are over awed by the Gleipnir.
Biologists didn't stop making great discoveries just because Darwin came out with the (awesome) Theory of Evolution, they drove forward to crack the genetic code which explained the internal mechanism driving evolution.
You never know when your next attempt at discovery will fail badly, fail but provide a new insight, work as expected, work well and provide a new insight, work great, or work great and provide a whole new set of marvelous insights. The day the Gleipnir was invented it's author did not say to himself: "Now I am ready to construct the greatest knot seen over the last few millennia." Just keep learning, thinking, & trying out new things, and maybe, just maybe...
I am not immune to awe & wonder
I am sure you are not - but we are all "spoiled", somehow, by the contemporary "politically correct" ideology of collective inventions and discoveries, of the gradual, non-revolutionary way everything in nature and society evolves, and the desperate need we feel to "explain" and "predict" phenomena, far more complex than our models and our processing powers enable us to do.
I did not say that most inventions are made collectively. I paraphrased Newton when he said in effect that: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
In saying: "science is mankind's collective discovery of the laws of nature." I was simply pointing out that science is the sum of all the scientific theories and discoveries garnered to date.
Why the Gleipnir was not discovered 2000 or 4000 years ago, is a mystery - and it will make no harm to us to accept that there will always remain some mysteries out there ! 
You never know "what's just around the corner" in knot-space. - That keeps it interesting!