
Does the world need polymaths? - gt2
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40865986
======
Fede_V
While we do need polymaths, the problem with a lot of self described polymaths
is that they skip the hard part of different fields and only focus on a
'Gladwellesque' understanding.

I think a better way to be a polymath is to be a real expert on a particular
subject, and then augment that with ancilliary knowledge from other fields. If
you claim to understand physics but don't know maths, or claim to be an expert
on classical literature but don't know how to read greek/latin, then you
aren't a polymath but a bullshit artist.

The polymaths I respect are people like Peter Medawar, JD Bernal, etc..

My particular pet peeve lately is people (especially prevalent in the
rationalist sphere) that talk about how Bayesian they are, but don't know what
a conjugate prior is, or have no understanding of MCMC sampling. There is
absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing either of those two things - but if
you don't know either, then describing yourself as a Bayesian is just putting
on airs.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> but if you don't know either, then describing yourself as a Bayesian is just
> putting on airs.

The more charitable, and arguable more correct, interpretation is that there
are (at least) two related but distinct meanings of 'Bayesian' being used. One
is referencing Bayes' Rule and some of its implications; the other an entire
sub-field of statistics. I'm guessing there isn't much overlap between the two
groups of people.

It also certainly doesn't seem impossible to be, e.g. "an expert on classical
literature but [not] know how to read greek/latin". Surely there's a lot to
know about classical literature that isn't strictly pertinent to the actual
vocabulary or grammar of ancient Greek or Latin. Or are you claiming that
there's only one right way, or only certain right ways, for someone to augment
their primary expertise with ancillary knowledge? I haven't previously
encountered the idea that being a polymath implied _expertise_ in numerous
areas, just _knowledge_ , tho presumably more than most _laypeople_.

~~~
pacaro
The challenge with the classics example is that if you aren't capable of
translating yourself then you are dependent on other peoples translations and
therefore their interpretations, so you are adding a layer of indirection,
sometimes more than one.

My Latin is woefully poor, but armed with a grammar and dictionary I can make
a stab. Just doing that shows me just how much interpretation happens.

~~~
arstin
I doubt anyone would disagree "the world's foremost authorities" on classical
lit need to know greek/latin.

But carefully reading and comparing several translations while following
centuries of commentary can surely make one an expert on, say, themes in Greek
epic poetry. I mean, if it doesn't then I'd just want to introduce into our
conversation a distinction or two in the area of "knowledge use" and just
stipulate which branch I'm intending by "expert"...

(This doesn't really matter for the previous point, but I actually think this
just follows from agreeing with you and then taking even more seriously "how
much interpretation happens".)

------
HillRat
The two species are complementary; hedgehogs have the knowledge and expertise
necessary to develop fine-granularity models of their domains, whereas foxes
find commonalities and connections between many coarse-grained models. Foxes
rely on hedgehogs to form their knowledge base; hedgehogs can use foxes'
insights for new directions of research and development. Innovation (as
opposed to optimization) is the result of cooperation occurring across
vertical and horizontal model boundaries.

~~~
petra
All this discussion is with the implicit assumption that only humans can
handle knowledge. But we have machines to help us.

So today it's easily possibly to talk with people from diverse fields, to
search for knowledge of specific characteristics in different fields, or to
reuse knowledge using code or patterns from a far field.

So it feels that with the right tools and technology and training, people
could connect ideas from multiple fields, without deep investment, and being a
polymath could be "democratized", similar to how many other complex tasks have
been democratized.

And this field seems somewhat under-invested, relative to the potential.

~~~
adrianN
Until computers get a lot smarter in understanding research papers, you'll
always have the problem of unknown unknowns. How do you discover things in
other fields if you don't even know the terminology? For example a medical
researcher reinvented (or at least claims to have reinvented) some calculus:
[https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9602/rediscover...](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9602/rediscovery-
of-calculus-in-1994-what-should-have-happened-to-that-paper)

If you never heard of calculus, googling for solutions can be difficult.

~~~
petra
This is a paper from 1994, before the Internet etc we're popular.

But let's try:

1\. Google to find what the relevant fields are - you get math. Search a forum
about math -> discover math.stackexchange.com -> ask for help or even just
terminology regarding "area under my graph/curve"? Once you get that , you
could follow on it(say ask for a library of the most accurate integration
method we know of today).

2\. Google that, find relevant results and dig for terminology, and follow on
it.

And sure , this isn't a bulletproof method, and you won't get 100% coverage.
But it help find connections .

~~~
throwaway2048
Its still people answering the stack overflow questions, and its still people
writing the posts Google finds.

Not to mention knowing what to search for and how to find it is itself a very
broad skill that requires ploymath type knowledge to really get the most out
of it.

Same reason librarians seem to know a bit of everything.

~~~
petra
Sure, there are still people writing stackoverflow answers, but they don't
need to be polymaths to share their knowledge.

------
saosebastiao
Forgive the analogy, I know its leaky, but I believe it to be approximate.

I liken the mindset that leads to advances to something similar to the Rete
algorithm, with human knowledge representing the alpha nodes and with human
intellect representing the beta nodes, and human memory and computation power
encompassing the whole graph. Once you match knowledge with a potential use of
that knowledge, you create innovation. This can happen forwards or backwards,
driven by new knowledge matching with existing applications (the research lab
model) or with new applications matching with existing knowledge (the startup
model).

The thing is, the rete graph requires enough working memory to store the
graph. It really only works if knowledge and application can be co-located.
And that means that polymaths have a huge advantage: their graphs are much
bigger, so any new information has a much higher probability of matching up
with something existing in their heads. This also explains why the greatest
scientists and inventors tended to make their most significant discoveries
later in life: their brain's graph had grown and become more useful and more
connected.

The thing is, by using IPC with distributed memory and computation
abstractions, you can expand that graph to be represented across multiple
humans. That works too. But we must remember that our abilities to innovate
across a multi-human graph absolutely rely on our speed and quality of
communication, and it must navigate past filters that represent our own
philosophical world view. And while that really puts a damper on our
collective innovation abilities, it doesn't impede it and we shouldn't be
discouraged by it.

TL;DR: The world doesn't _need_ polymaths, per se. We can innovate by
collective minds communicating with each other. But it's not as good, and so
it's still really beneficial to have polymaths around.

~~~
whatnotests
Came here to say this.

------
SubiculumCode
As a post-doc in developmental cog neuro I feel I have to be a 'poly math.'
Cognitive theory, Developmental processes theory, Brain theory, developmental
brain processes, structural and fMRI methods and software, multiple regression
(including mixed models, structural equation modeling) intermediate
programming, linux administration, technical writing, experimental design,
administration of research activities, teaching (??), and recently throw in
autism research. On top of that, I'm reasonably informed on current events,
read HN daily, keep tabs on the outlines of advances in medicine and other
sciences.

I think I'll go back to sleep.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I am curious why the parent is earning down votes. Is it the comment about
teaching?

~~~
personlurking
I didn't downvote it but it's possibly the "r/iamverysmart" feeling of it. It
exists between the aforementioned and adding value to the conversation (ie,
that certain current fields require both depth and breadth).

~~~
SubiculumCode
All I meant that in my field we are asked to have competence in a wide range
of disciplines. In contrast to the 'r/iamverysmart' and consistent with the
article, I feel intimidated by those that do specialize in those things I use.
I am aware of a lot, but I feel like I am pretender in all of them. I
constantly come into contact with the limits of my intelligence and I am not
impressed.

------
jowiar
The biggest pressure against polymaths is the structure of the modern
university. From department organization, mentoring, battles for funding, it
is very difficult to find an encouraging environment if you don't stay within
a narrow niche.

As an aside, I feel like most interesting innovation in academic computer
science happened before the field was full of computer scientists. In the
early days, the field was a meeting point of trained mathematicians,
physicists, economists, engineers, and linguists, and innovation flourished.
To some extent, I credit people exploring and communicating about similar
concepts from multiple perspectives. Now, everybody in academic CS has taken
the same path in life, and it makes things quite boring.

~~~
jackcosgrove
The decline in the pace of discovery, if it is real, could also be because the
early researchers took the low hanging fruit.

------
leroy_masochist
I thought a polymath was someone who had mastery of more than one very
difficult / elusive / elite skillset.

Someone like, say, Brian May (Queen guitarist and astrophysicist).

The guys profiled know a lot of trivia, which is certainly impressive -- but
does this really make them polymaths?

~~~
shard
Reminds me of Dan Spitz, lead guitarist of Anthrax and master watchmaker, and
John Urschel, Ravens offensive lineman and mathematician.

------
meri_dian
We are living in a 'cooperative/corporate' age, where the prime drivers of
innovation are collections of humans rather than individuals. The problems we
face are more complex than ever before and exceed the individual capabilities
of even the brightest among us.

Visionary thinkers still have their place. A Cooperative needs leaders to
chart its course. In a complex world, people who can derive inspiration from
multiple domains of knowledge will always be valuable.

~~~
Retric
Groups of people have issues scaling. At the scale of the say the DoD you end
up with a lot of inefficient redundancy which pushes organisations to
specialize.

Google for example does not actually do that many different things, it just
has crazy amounts of leverage.

~~~
pureGuano
I think people are (slowly) re-learning the importance of redundancy. Having
multiple, competing implementations makes you far less vulnerable to shocks.

~~~
posterboy
Using relational databases as a model for the structures in question, some
form of redundancy (secondary and primary keys) is needed to avoid more
redundancy (dublication). I actually don't know what I'm talking about, if it
made sense to someone, please correct me where I'm wrong.

------
syntheticnature
I am reminded of a bit, possibly apocryphal, that when the first three-fin
rocket (instead of four, as had been the case with the V-2 and successors) was
proposed it was questioned whether or not it would be stable, up until someone
pointed out that arrows with three fletching feathers had been flying straight
for quite some time.

------
DataWorker
I'm reminded of Nietzsche's Zarathrusta where there's an encounter with an
expert on the brains of leeches. For me the question of whether we need
polymaths is one about what sort of society we desire and it's a very easy
question to answer. I wonder whether the much discussed decline in
productivity, which can of course be debated, isn't largely the result of
becoming a society of leech brain experts.

------
roceasta
I'm grateful to share the world with _anyone_ who is trying to think and is
brave enough to communicate their ideas in the face of career stagnation.

That said, I expect most geniuses _are_ polymaths by conventional standards,
whether we need them to be or not. Their intellectual development is neither a
well-rounded curriculum nor a steady progression but marked by series of deep
_obsessions_.

------
quickben
We probably need polymaths more than people writing clickbait headlines for
the BBC.

------
4lch3m1st
We should all be encouraged to be polymaths since school. But I believe the
great challenge is not really to push such idea to students, but to actually
make them find interest on what they're expected to learn, be it to become
polymaths or leech brain experts.

I'm saying that given the education background from my country, Brazil. I was
surprised, back when I was teaching programming to kids, at how seem to care
so less about the actual learning process, while still having a lot of
learning potential.

------
calebm
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to
think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” (Nikola Tesla)

~~~
observation
I feel that when I read old textbooks, even the children's ones.

People have gotten less coherent, I don't know why, but I suspect it is so.

------
chaosbutters314
I know a lot of companies in the engineering/science world that hire PhDs who
are experts in very specific fields and others who have broad knowledge in a
lot of fields. They try to balance these 2 types of people: broad versus
specific and have them work together for synergy.

------
anotheryou
The article doesn't go very deep in to the answer.

Maybe they aro good managers, maybe communicatiors, but either way it's a bit
of a specialization in itself that benefits greatly from broad knowledge. I
don't see how exactly they could bring together different sciences directly.

------
cableshaft
While I'm not sure I'd say I'm qualified to be an expert on all of these
subjects, and thus not a 'polymath', I've at least understood enough to teach
software development, game design, and writing to others, and have worked
professionally in each of those fields, and I've consumed a good amount of
articles, podcasts, and books on each as well.

I've actually found myself drawing from each of these fields as well as other
subjects I have a cursory knowledge in (linguistics, philosophy, psychology,
etc) to come up with new ideas for the other subjects, so I personally think
having a decent amount of knowledge in multiple fields and cross-pollinating
between them is very useful.

Scott Adams even suggests becoming very good at two or more things in his blog
about career advice.

>Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself
rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-
advice.html)

------
ericd
Yes, because a lot of innovation comes from transferring knowledge between
unrelated fields. There is a lot of benefit to cross disciplinary knowledge.

~~~
personlurking
FWIW and/or for anyone interested, here's a related Wikipedia on the subject,
talking about the different types of knowledge spillovers (MAR, Porter,
Jacobs).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_spillover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_spillover)

~~~
ericd
Sweet, I didn't realize there was a formal term for this concept, but it makes
sense that economists would have tried to formalize this :-)

------
randcraw
Can a polymath _not_ be a scientist by training? It seems like so many topics
today require substantial grounding in quantitative skills that are almost
impossible to gain outside grad-school-level studies in science and
engineering. Can a polymath whose expertise spans the sciences truly come from
elsewhere -- math, economics, philosophy, etc?

In a similar vein, I have yet to read a popular science book written by a non-
scientist that comes close to the incandescent prose of the best scientist
authors -- all of whom seem to be professional scientists (Dyson, Sagan,
Morrison, Wilson, Medawar, etc).

Of course their skill came not only from academics, but from that rare mix of
curiosity and rigorous inquiry essential to separate what we know from what we
don't, and of course, the passion to push beyond into the unknown.

So can such skills essential to a polymath also arise from outside science?

------
RivieraKid
Even in this day and age, you can become a "quasi-polymath" if you like
learning and are efficient at it. By that I mean, reach 80% understanding of a
_lot_ of fields with 20% the effort of becoming an expert. You can do that by
choosing good learning resources and focusing on conceptual understanding and
fundamentals.

This is something I wish to do over time, learn about a bunch of fields to,
say, about undergraduate level. Right now I'm reading Molecular biology of the
Cell (best textbook I've ever come across by the way) and it's rewarding to be
able to understand much more of biology research news for example. And when
you want to learn about some specific sub-topic on Wikipedia, you have the
fundamentals to do that without saying "I know some of these words".

------
SandersAK
Is this really an article about polymaths that doesn't mention a single
Islamic polymath?

The whole concept of polymath is not that you're a genius or even knowledgable
about a bunch of stuff. In the Islamic tradition the concept insists that you
can't understand math without knowing poetry. Can't understand medicine
without understanding geometry etc. All elements of human interpretation and
expression are linked and help you explore the other.

Here's a list of polymaths that the article didn't mention:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age)

~~~
criddell
> The whole concept of polymath is not that you're a genius or even
> knowledgable about a bunch of stuff.

Actually, I think that's exactly what it means. The Wikipedia entry on
Polymath[1] says basically the same thing as the article as does my
dictionary.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath)

~~~
gkya
> A polymath (Greek: πολυμαθής, polymathēs, "having learned much")[1] is a
> person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject
> areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to
> solve specific problems.

The first paragraph from that article.

~~~
criddell
That's almost exactly what my dictionary says. I think you and I are in
agreement. Pretty much by definition, a polymath is knowledgeable about a
bunch of stuff.

~~~
gkya
> Pretty much by definition, a polymath is knowledgeable about a bunch of
> stuff.

Certainly. I was (misunderstandingly I guess) getting at the genius part, as
that's not really required. Also, I guess SandersAK was giving the islamic
perspective on polymathness, not his.

~~~
criddell
Genius isn't required, but I'd wager polymaths are geniuses at a higher rate
than the general population.

------
denvercoder904
Yes. The industry calls them system engineers.

------
barkingcat
Like this woman? [http://slippedisc.com/2017/08/i-gave-up-a-career-in-the-
defe...](http://slippedisc.com/2017/08/i-gave-up-a-career-in-the-defence-
industry-to-be-an-opera-singer/)

She sounds like this:

[https://slippedisc.com/2017/08/last-night-the-aida-missed-
he...](https://slippedisc.com/2017/08/last-night-the-aida-missed-her-entry-so-
a-violinist-stood-up-and-sang/)

------
MaysonL
A friend of mine is a Ph.D. philosopher, playwright, director, actor, singer-
songwriter, and retired [due to training injury] undefeated (3-0) professional
boxer. Do they qualify?

------
DrBazza
Contrary to Betteridge's law, yes we need polymaths. Asimov wrote a story
along these lines. Already there are cases of esoteric knowledge in one field
being applicable to another. I recall, though cannot find the reference, of a
pure maths technique being applied to quantum physics which only happened by
the fortunate meeting of two researchers.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Heck, it already happens entirely inside of a field: probably once a year and
at least once a decade, there's a major paper in math or physics that is
basically "applying standard technique in subfield A to subfield B".

~~~
housel
Indeed, one of my professors in grad school defined a research contribution as
adding an edge in a metaphorical bipartite graph to link formerly disparate
subfields.

------
mncharity
Looking back at 2018, how is it possible that just before our flourishing age
of polymaths, it was not uncommon to see nonsense written like "Two hundred
years ago, it was still possible for one person to be a leader in several
different fields of inquiry. Today that is no longer the case."? I suggest it
was a lack of situational awareness, about several issues.

About having time to excel. Artificial light capturing the night was a century
past. Electrification and its labor saving was almost that. Few still farmed,
and the cultural memory of the effort required had decayed. Commuting was
common, and it was rare to be able to work during it. Consumer robotics and AI
were still novelties. Major industries, both legal and illegal, were focused
on encouraging people to squander their time. So there was no sense that
people had more time available in the present than in the past, or might have
more in the future.

About education. Education was still a wretched disaster, largely unchanged
for centuries. Science content was particularly abysmal. There was some
professional recognition of this (for example, chemistry education research
characterizing high-school chemistry content as incoherent), but it was not
widely appreciated. Popular focus was on the relative gap between "well"
performing and poorly performing students. With no thought that future primary
school students might soon be outperforming their present undergraduates. An
educator might speak of nanometers as being "unimaginably small", rather than
something played with in pre-K. The Internet was just old enough to be taken
for granted, so on the eve of AR/VR mass deployment, people were mumbling the
same nonsense as in decades past "I can't imagine these computers/internet/AR
will have any noticeable effect on people's lives". Past progress, such as
mass education regardless of class, was taken for granted. Such progress as
was happening, such as attending to misconception ecologies, was not widely
appreciated. They knew in the abstract that civilization advances by a teacher
being able to pass on knowledge more easily then they themselves learned it.
But having no sense of existing change, or of the backed up logjam of
potential change, they were blindsided by the rate of change once the jam
broke.

About science. Access to scientific knowledge was still highly circumscribed.
Many journals were still not open access. Some research talks were on youtube,
but it was still rare. Much insight into fields was still localized to
conversations at conferences, and spread by word of mouth. Again, the world of
paper journals and paper card catalogs was sufficiently past that there was no
sense of the velocity of progress. "Non-scientists" contributing to science
was seen as a novelty - the parents of a child with a rare disease becoming
experts on it; or children with bees by chance asking an interesting question.
Larger examples, such as community characterization of galaxies, were seen as
isolated cases. Because hybrid AI-human systems, and computer supported
cooperative work, were still in their infancy, and unappreciated. There was
little sense that science had profoundly changed in the preceding half
century, or would similarly change in the next.

So I suggest their blindness was rooted in a failure to understand their
present, and a neglect of looking beyond it. A neglect of looking at their
past, and thus of appreciating the velocity of change marked by their present.
A failure to understand their present, and its defining constraints. And a
neglect of reflecting on how those constraints were about to change. They
lived in a bubble of time, peering myopically at the world, and thought
themselves unmoving.

------
b34r
Dot connectors are always welcome.

------
gt_
I am not an expert in anything, but I am working on it. When I try to focus on
studying one discipline consistently for a period of time, I get distracted
(and excited!) when I notice patterns that could inform other disciplines.
While it is distracting, the patterns are able to help me digest new concepts
faster. I have noticed this connection-making inspires heaps of my creativity.

Explaining computer science to otherwise non-technical philosophy grads is not
only easy; it is what I would call a 'downhill process'. This probably depends
on them being decent philosophy students, of course.

