Doctor Angelicus “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” -Marva Collins. In our modern world, success is seen as something acquired through hard work, discipline, and sleepless nights. It’s the man who can’t stop trying with that one business product, or another, with their dedication to the gym. Our society insinuates that success is the sole result of the individual. Is it really a snub? Is success the exclusive product of the person, or does the environment play a larger role? In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he talks about accumulative advantage, and how some people have an advantage over others due to external aspects that they cannot control. The triumphant life …show more content…
He had a noble upbringing and a high quality education, that were due to his royal ties which led him to his success. Thomas Aquinas is a perfect example of the idea of accumulative advantage. Born in a family castle to a rich noble family, Thomas Aquinas grew up with success knocking at his door. His father, Landulf of Aquino, was the head of the most powerful branch in the family, and knight in the service of Emperor Fredrick II (Brown, Christopher M.). As a boy, he started his education at age 5, and later moved to the Studien Generale, a newly founded university in Naples. At this university, he had access to Petrus de Ibernia, who aside from teaching him geometry, astronomy, and music, taught him the philosophies of Aristotle, Averroes, and Maimonides. In Outliers, Gladwell points out that people who have more time to spend studying or practicing a specific set of skills, tend to have that time because of outside forces. They don’t have the need to work a job, or raise children, or support their family because that’s already being taken care of by somebody else. At a very early age, Thomas Aquinas had access to some of the finest education in the medieval world. He had years of intense study under his belt and access to