In any field of endeavor, it is impossible to make a significant contribution without first being strongly influenced by past achievements within that field.

The statement above asserts that it is impossible to make an important contribution without first being strongly influenced by the past achievements. I agree with such an assertion as long as the “being strongly influenced” equals to knowing about the past achievement; one cannot be influenced without knowing the past achievement. Nevertheless, although it is impossible to make a great contribution without first being influenced by the past achievements, the overdue “strong influence” also can make it impossible to make a new contribution.

To begin with, to make a significant contribution it is necessary to be influenced by the past achievements through knowing and examining them. First, invention of the complex systems absolutely needs the knowledge of simpler comprising parts. To illustrate, think about the automobile. Obviously, without having been influenced by knowledge of making wheel, gears and engine, it was impossible to even have a concept of automobile, let alone the invention of it.

Another reason is that past achievements are the only clues leading us to make something new and practicable. It precludes individuals to waste their time on making contributions that already is optimized. Consider a personal experience. Having inspired by the lightning, I was going to research on a method to fix nitrogen in soil with electricity. I came to know that there is another economic way of fixing nitrogen in soil without the need of a high voltage electric arc. Then I stopped my research because even if I made a conclusion, it has no usage the current time with far better methods.

However, individuals should not be influenced to the point that be captivated by the past contributions. Many of the scientific blind spots and biases are made of overdue aggrandizing the past achievements. Consider the Albert Einstein. When he was challenging the widely accepted Newtonian laws of gravity, he was alone because many thought that he is doing vain. Newtonian laws were always fit. But the orbit of planet Mercury, in scale of a fingertip in the millions of miles, was inconsistent with that theory. Einstein, different from others praising Newton, corrected the fault with conceiving a new theory: Curvature of time and space dimensions.

In short, creating important contributions absolutely requires being influenced by the past achievements in terms of knowledge and insight. But, when the influence of the past achievements becomes exaggeratedly strong, individuals become prone to develop biases toward achievement’s perfection and not be able to see the flaws.