Beginner is the person who have many ideas to deal with the problem, but expert is one of the persons who have experienced a lot of things in their life. Basically, expert have vast experience than beginner. therefore, I disagree with the statement that in any field of inquiry the beginner is more likely than the expert to make important contributions. here, in any field makes the above statement little bit confusing because some field of study requires freshers to explore more ideas likewise some field requires expert who have gain more experiences in their life.
we see many scientific creations around us. all those creations haven't become perfect. there are a lot of hard work behind it. people who have involve on those activities to create perfect creations on onetime doesn't achieve success because they have to face so many problem and failure; but these failures provide them a lot of experience to deal with the obstacles which make them expert. for example, a new chef can make a new dish perfectly but making the same dish again and again with same flavor and aroma makes him/her perfect and expert chef. similarly, newton-who discover that apple fell form the tree due to certain force didn't make him expert until he found that apple fell due to gravitational force.
in the aspect of in any field of inquiry we can say that in the field of bank and big business organization- they search for those candidates who have gain a lot of experiences on this field. this is for the reason that they have many new and experience ideas to deal with the problems to make the business profitable. hence, we can say that expert can contribute more than beginner in any field. for example, a new comer can make film which can attract many people, but that film maker was guided by a director who have a lot of experiences in the field of film industry. "Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.” Robert Heinlein has described in these lines the true meaning of an expert.
Although there is no comparison between experts and beginners but still there are beginners who have created history. Madam Curie is one such example who discovered radium. Radium is used till date and Madam Curie won Nobel Prize for this discovery of hers. A beginner has many ideas and his area of thinking is vast as compared to an expert’s restricted vision.
All the important discoveries are made by experts and there contribution in the history cannot be denied. In any field of enquiry, we need to trust our experts as they have put in so many years of research into it. There has been so much practice gone by an expert into discovering something and such practices make a perfectionist.