Well, of course you can. Pick any human endeavour, including software development, and I can demonstrate that it's just applied philosophy. But it's not a useful exercise, IMO, it's just a reductionist rhetorical device.

I think it's wise to keep ourselves humble -- few of us are blazing new trails, in anything that we do. And I agree that many so-called innovations are nothing of the sort. But if we reduce everything that we do to revision and extension, then the word "innovation" entirely loses meaning. Why would we want to do that?