"The way students and scholars interpret the materials they work with in their academic fields is more a matter of personality than of training. Diffe

"The way students and scholars interpret the materials they work with in their academic fields is more a matter of personality than of training. Different interpretations come about when people with different personalities look at exactly the same objects, facts, data, or events and see different things."

Many have wondered about the way how students and scholars interpret the materials they work with in their academic fields. On one hand, there are those who argue that personality plays a stronger role. On the other hand, there are those that argue that their perceptions come stem from their training. I believe that both personality and training play equal roles in how they approach their area of academic study. The topic statement also proposes that different interpretations of data, facts and events come about when different personalities look at it. I tend to disagree with this statement as there are instances where theories and formulas of an academic study put a limit on this.

First, let us take a look at how training influences the way students and scholar view their studies in their academic field. What is the main role of training and education in a scholar's life? To instill the necessary knowledge and skills needed in their academic fields. After all, a mathematician cannot solve complex equations without the knowledge of mathematical formulas. Nor can a psychologist analyze personality disorders without a basic understanding of the theories of the human psyche. A scholar or a student's ability to understand and perform in their academic areas is dependent on their training and education. Their training often span many numbers of years, and during these years formal methods and methodologies are drilled into their minds. Their training inculcates them with the mechanics and knowledge that are used to interpret the materials they work with in their academic fields. Their ideas and views, refined by their education, would definitely be different from a layman's view and in this sense their training influences how they interpret the materials they work with in their academic fields.

Though training does exert a reasonable amount of influence in the way students and scholars perceive their material of study, we should not entirely disregard the influence of individual personalities. After all, students and scholars are not mindless products of their training and education. Their training provides the knowledge and refines their methodologies at handling their material of study but their personalities are the individual lens that color the way they interpret things around them. Each person is unique and have different interests and drives. If everyone was homogeneous, there would be no progress made in any academic field for everyone would generate the same ideas and perceive things in the exact same way. Creativity and different personalities are what drives progress. Think about the colorful personalities of the most famous people of our time. Would anybody else have thought of tying a key to a kite and flying it during a thunderstorm like Benjamin Franklin? Or would any other person have proposed the psychosexual theories by Sigmund Freud?

So it is clear that both personality and training play important roles. Different data interpretations can come about when people of different personalities look at the same objects, facts or events but this is not necessarily true. There are certain restraints that would prevent different data interpretations. Take for example, a math equation. The field of mathematics is more rigid, the product of different formulas and laws that have been tested and proven by forefathers of our past. If a mathematician hits an deadlock in his quest to solving a complex formula, he cannot rewrite or perceive it based on his personal will because the solution is already constrained by all the theories and formulas that he learned. However, in a more subjective field like psychology, different psychologists can take on different psychological knowledge and analytical tools to use on the same patient and come out with different theories.

For all the reasons I have presented above, I like to support my position that both personality and training play equal roles in the way how students and scholars interpret the materials they work with in their area of academic study. However, I disagree with the statement that different data interpretations come about when different personalities look at the same material as this is not necessarily true.