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 and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
I definitely agree with a softer version of the statement. In any field of endeavour, I believe it is very hard to make a significant contribution without first being strongly influenced by past achievements within that field. Although very hard, the word "impossible" is too strict, which makes the claim too hard to support. By replacing it with "very hard", it becomes more plausible, perfectly reflecting my personal beliefs.
First, let us discuss why studying past achievements in a particular field matters for people who want to make significant contributions to that field. In studying past contributions and main thinkers of a certain field, we learn their main challenges and open problems, which tells us where a contribution is more welcomed. By doing that, we can better pick up the current status quo of that field and advance it, building on what other great people have left in the past. No one may have put it more eloquently than Isaac Newton, when he said he was only able to achieve what he did because he stood on the shoulders of giants.
Also, studying past achievements within a field is important not only to pick up where other great people left, but also to avoid mistakes other great people made, learning not only from past successes but also from failures. In that way, one can apply successful methods that worked in other contexts to their own, replicating what worked to achieve the desired result. There are several examples in most diverse areas. One that strikes me the most is how Martin Luther King Jr, being strongly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's struggle to achieve India's independence from the United Kingdom, learned the power of nonviolence in social movement, successfully applying it to the civil rights movement in the United States.
It is true that there are geniuses that, at very young age, dazzle the world with supernatural performances, being capable of significant contributions with very little study of past achievements in their respective fields. From math savants to music child prodigies, such as Mozart, history shows us several counterexamples to the claim that it is impossible to leave a significant mark without being influenced by past achievements.
Nevertheless, these counterexamples are the exception, not the rule. Most of the contributions in the world are made not by geniuses with supernatural performances, but by regular people with a strong sense of purpose and desire to achieve significant goals. Therefore, one can maximize his or her chances to make a significant contribution in a particular field by diligently studying past achievements within that field. This significantly improves the odds of his or her having a purposeful and fruitful life.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, may, nevertheless, so, therefore, such as, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.5258426966 82% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.4196629213 32% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 14.8657303371 67% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 11.3162921348 150% => OK
Pronoun: 41.0 33.0505617978 124% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 76.0 58.6224719101 130% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 12.9106741573 77% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2320.0 2235.4752809 104% => OK
No of words: 445.0 442.535393258 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.21348314607 5.05705443957 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59293186426 4.55969084622 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.10623743802 2.79657885939 111% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 215.323595506 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.519101123596 0.4932671777 105% => OK
syllable_count: 707.4 704.065955056 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59117977528 101% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 6.24550561798 128% => OK
Article: 1.0 4.99550561798 20% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 3.10617977528 64% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.77640449438 113% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.38483146067 160% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 20.2370786517 89% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 23.0359550562 104% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.7518382988 60.3974514979 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.888888889 118.986275619 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.7222222222 23.4991977007 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.16666666667 5.21951772744 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 7.80617977528 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 10.2758426966 136% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 5.13820224719 39% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.83258426966 41% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.349608729379 0.243740707755 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.11025687174 0.0831039109588 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.111870292663 0.0758088955206 148% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.194535256809 0.150359130593 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0650697285692 0.0667264976115 98% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.1392134831 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.8420337079 96% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.92365168539 141% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.1743820225 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.1639044944 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.38706741573 99% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 100.480337079 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 11.8971910112 76% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.2143820225 103% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.7820224719 110% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.