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

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

Every day we learn several classes. Our teachers introduce us to each aspect of the science and literature. They talk about the basic theorems and masterpieces from our previous outstanding scientists and writers. We obtain the basic view of the world, and we gradually accumulate our knowledge from our textbooks. It’s quite smooth and comfortable to follow our pioneers’ steps, but is it impossible to make one’s way without first being strongly influenced by past achievements?

The answer becomes divided and conditional. Newton, one of our greatest scientists in human’s history who had founded Calculus and Gravity once put it, I’m just standing on the shoulder of a giant. Apart from his humble tone, his word enlightens us to punctiliously review the crystal of our previous achievements and then try to conclude and develop building on those. That is not an outlandish or scarce case. Like what we have seen as common sense, the motion in a macro world will never betray the basic law from the trilogy of Newton’s motion laws. However, in the period when he was living, he concluded all these methodologies following the conclusion and spirits from the distinctive sage named Galileo, who is famous for his free fall experiments in the leaning tower of Pizza. The trilogy soon made Newton a great reputation in the scientific field.

But that is not always the case. In the same period of Galileo, another great pioneer on the contrary, suffered from the suspect and stigma, and was once ostracized from the scientific circle. His name was Copernicus. He had come up with a brilliant cognition, a brand-new perspective seeing our earth in a shape of sphere. This theory was totally challenging the authority of Aristotle, who was universally acknowledged as a full-fledged philosopher. Copernicus finally sacrificed his life in defense of his theory which currently proves to be correct and in an eager to enlighten the illiteracy. Though the authority of his period seemed impeccable and undefeated, Copernicus theorem was acknowledged later and people exculpate him from the stigma of heresy.

To sum up, past achievements are the worldly perspective from our former sages and scientists. Their contributions to scientific or other aspects are remarkable and should never be ignored. But our recognition and realization of our planet, our universe, and what we called our world is amorphous every now and then. We relate to the past achievements to understand their views to express the world, we may also make our innovative moves to pioneer a new perspective of our world. It’s not authority or past achievements that we should firmly and blindly follow, it’s our heart of research, our critical view of science and our perseverance in exploring the mystery. If the past achievements are like a key that we study the truth founded by our predecessor, the future innovation is the path to make our own history. We rectify and learn from the past, and then we form our confidence to step into the future.