In any field of endeavor, it is impossible to make a significant contribution without first being strongly influenced by past achievements within that field.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement

This is true that pioneers rely mostly on their ancestors’ achievements on a given field. One cannot achieve a fulfillment without knowing about or mastering on the burden of experiences and achievements of past individuals of an area of endeavor. However, I think that the claim that is expressed in the prompt is too strong to sustain, as it implies that it is *impossible* to succeed without being influenced by past achievements. Thus, I want to defend a modest version of the claim with following reasons.

First, people who worked before in a given field faced with many problems that may hinder newcomers from succeeding. One cannot begin to build something in a field from scratch, unless he or she has enough knowledge of the issues of that field. And this is not going to be achievable without knowing what people before us knew. That is, we are better off to use others’ experiences rather than personally experiencing everything. That is just waste of time to try to go the way that people before us went. Therefore, it is totally reasonable to know, use, and master on past achievements of others, before trying to make a contribution in a field. However, one cannot claim that it is impossible for someone to achieve even a great success without relying significantly on others achievements. It is possible in principle but it would be so demanding to make any genuine contribution. That is why we call some as genius.

Second, not only knowing the content of past achievements, but also information about the way of achieving those accomplishments is something necessary for new developments in a field. Even if one wants to change a field with a new achievement, he or she should know how past knowledge in that field is acquired. The inventor should know about the methodology of a field, i.e. the way participants in the field do make contribution. Even a famous genius like Newton claims that he sees farther placed because he is standing on shoulders of giants! That is not to say that he just relies on past scientist achievements, as we know that he rejects many theories in his days physics. But Newton certainly uses the way of doing science that he received from his predecessors, i.e. from Galileo, Kepler, and Brahe. He uses mathematical scientific method, which was a successful achievement of others in physics. Thus, not just content, but also the ways of acquiring content is important in a field and one then also needs to know about them in order to secure a contribution in the field. However, many times some inventors succeed just because they invent new ways of proceeding an endeavor. That will deflate claim of the prompt to some degree, but is just in minority of cases of inventions.

To conclude, I should restate that one would not be likely in making original contribution in a field without using his or her predecessors’ achievements. However, it is still possible for inventors to ignore partially some achievements of a field.