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

Today lets discuss a topic...

Here the author claims that in any field if one wants to make a significant contribution (which is hard), one has to see the past achievements in that field. What do you think? Let me put down my views.

I don't think that it is completely necessary for a person to be influenced by past achievements to excel in that field, though in some cases it is. Now let’s consider both sides.

Nowadays, we can see various fields where past achievements do not contribute towards the present contributions. For example a scientist is performing an experiment on a theory in order to make a practical law out of it. So in this case he may have achieved the desired result on paper, but that doesn't confirm that he is going to get the same result experimentally. We can see other example where a scientist has proved a theory after assuming certain values for a variable, but latter another scientist got to know from his considerations that the value initially assumed was wrong and so the final result now differs. So, here he has not been influenced by the past achievements but rather has contributed to amend the previous result. Like these there can be numerous examples where the claim doesn’t hold good.

In some cases, though previous achievements or results are bound to be considered in order to make progress in that particular field. Here we can consider the example of technology driving our modern day mobiles. In them the hardware and software is improving within nights and for developing newer hardware and software it is mandatory for developer to consider previous models and versions and do the changes accordingly to concur to the ever increasing demand and competition in the market. Continuous changes in the models of even basic bicycle to cars to spacecrafts till date which initiated as soon as they were developed also exemplifies that changes are done considering the past achievements.  

So at last I think that it is sometimes important to consider the past achievements but not in all the cases as mentioned by above examples...

What do you think guys..?