No field of study can advance significantly unless it incorporates outside knowledge.

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 would agree only partially with this claim. While it is acceptable that the knowledge and experience outside the study and scope of the field in question can be helpful in making significant advancement in the study, it is hard to accept that a significant advancement in the given field of study is not possible without the help of knowledge and experience outside the field. The claim loses its ground due to two main reasons.

First of all the vague interpretation of the term "knowledge outside the field" - this term makes the so called outside knowledge almost universal. To take a quotidian example, the study of fashion designing is certainly out of the scope of study of advanced arithmetic and, in contradiction to the mentioned claim, will not be very useful in making significant advancement in the study of arithmetic laws. Medical thesis will not be helpful in understanding archaic poems. And rocket science would be almost helpless when dealing with culinary science. Hence, one needs to be very specific while selecting the outside field of knowledge which will be helpful in the study at hand. It is not always possible to use outside knowledge to make advancement in a particular study.

On the other hand there are some exceptions where seemingly irrelevant fields supported a significant study. Scientists now have proven that classical music can be helpful in accelerating plant growth. Thesis and statistics created to study economic growth and trends also help understand public behavior patterns. These examples do corroborate the fact that outside studies may help a particular study to make significant advancement; yet again they are not solely responsible for this progress. The agriculture science has done much advancement, before discovering this amazing connection between classical music and plant growth. Social scientists cannot only rely on the statistics made by economists in persuading their studies. In other words, the significant advancement in a particular study will not be precluded if this outside information is not available.

We may sum up the discussion by agreeing that outside knowledge can be helpful in making significant advancement in a study, however we cannot bestow the entire credit for the significant advancement in the study only on the outside knowledge.

What is the purpose of this writing? Is it for GRE? It's always better you include this purpose in the title so that others can provide you with more task related comments. Also, this essay should have been opened in Writing Feedback forum.


I feel it is always good to conclude your introduction with a statement expressing your opinion. Before that introduce the claim to the reader. (Open your introduction with a hook )