
The Last Days of the Polymath (2009) - _pius
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/content/edward-carr/last-days-polymath
======
clusterfoo
Reminds me of this bit by Feynman on the difference between knowing something,
and knowing the name of that thing:

[http://youtu.be/05WS0WN7zMQ](http://youtu.be/05WS0WN7zMQ)

There does seem to exist a particular breed of "intellectual" who not only
confuses the two, but seemingly believes that conceptual understanding is
merely an unpleasant side effect one must endure in order to achieve the
ultimate goal, which is to grow one's vocabulary (and grow it beyond
recognition, and, more importantly, beyond scrutiny from mere-mortals).

Jargon creep is inevitable when we go expert-crazy, which, it seems to me, is
more about marking territory and protecting one's clique than any legitimate
concern for the advancement of knowledge.

> "It's simply no longer possible to be an expert in more than one field."

This is a lazy straw-man argument (1).

Of course, experts are necessary, and we'd only go so far before we start
running in circles if not for dedicated individuals... But how does this
negate the value of polymaths?

This is like saying that wheels on an airplane are completely useless, because
wings have been meticulously crafted for the sole purpose of flying. -- The
two serve different purposes. The plane can't fly without the one, but it
won't get off the ground without the other.

A polymath will never acquire the depth of understanding of an expert, but
neither can the expert have access to the more varied sources of inspiration /
patterns of thought that a polymath acquires through breadth of experience. It
seems obvious to me that the two personality types complement each other (like
"the two cultures" \-- problem solvers and theory builders).

If anything, given the insurmountable amount of knowledge we've gathered on
any given topic, now more than ever we need to actively research more
effective means of cross-pollinating, or run the risk of academic myopia.

\--

(1) or maybe not a straw-man... a red herring? We might need to bring in an
expert in argumentation theory -- preferably one with extensive research in
the field of informal fallacies -- as I am clearly not qualified to comment
one way or the other.

~~~
bane
> which is to grow one's vocabulary

Not surprisingly, people often confuse well spoken individuals with
intelligent individuals. We've probably all met the incredibly polished and
well spoken person who was otherwise dumb as a sack of hammers, but it took a
long time to figure it out because of their well developed communication
abilities sending a confusing signal.

It short circuits our intelligence detectors. It reminds me of Williams
Syndrome which, despite sufferers having an average IQ of about 70, confound
people who know them because of their high social engagement and constant
friendly chatting.

I've found it's often helpful when meeting new people to sit back and observe
the quality of the thinking behind their words rather than just the words
themselves. The results are often surprising.

~~~
gaius
_Not surprisingly, people often confuse well spoken individuals with
intelligent individuals. We 've probably all met the incredibly polished and
well spoken person who was otherwise dumb as a sack of hammers_

The classic example being Stephen Fry.

~~~
PM_Tech
...this seems like a needlessly low attack on the man. Why do you perceive him
to be as dumb as a bag of hammers?

A respected actor, comedian and presenter he has also authored a number of
novels and several non-fiction works and graduated from one of the most
respected educational institutions in the entire world.

Hardly dumb.

~~~
gaius
Because he uses his posh accent and long words to talk utter nonsense, and
gets upset when he gets called on it.

One of many:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/stephen_fry_not_upse...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/stephen_fry_not_upset_you_twat/)

~~~
PM_Tech
That's strange considered he published a semi-famous essay taking grammar and
language pedants to task.

[http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-
language...](http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-
language%E2%80%A6/)

How does your link make Fry out to be as dumb as a bag of hammers? You may
dislike him personally (shrug) but that does not make the man stupid.

I would also agree that the Register are being needlessly cruel by inviting
readers to comb though his statements and then popularise his mistakes. I very
much doubt any person on earth could withstand that kind of scrutiny, not even
politicians who have armies of people to protect them from making quantative
and qualitative mistakes.

Fry speaks as eccentric British comedians from the upper middle class speak. I
guess non-natives just don't get it.

~~~
gaius
Here you go: [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706825-it-s-now-very-
common-...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706825-it-s-now-very-common-to-
hear-people-say-i-m-rather)

~~~
PM_Tech
That is a poor example for you to choose. Stephen Fry is completely and
utterly right.

The Supreme Court also think so [1] as does the Rational Wiki [2] and Salman
Rushdie [3]. Fry has expressed a sentiment that a great deal of thinkers and
speakers have expressed. Others that have echoed his statement include Phillip
Pullman, Penn and Teller, Christopher Hitchens, Lord Mawhinney and other
legislators.

Celebrity endorsements run a distant second to the Supreme Court though.

I am unsure how that qualifies Fry as _dumb as a bag of hammers_? Do you think
that people _do_ have a right to be offended? How would such a right be
defended?

[1][http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf)
[2][http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Right_not_to_...](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Right_not_to_be_offended)
[3][http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/739464-nobody-has-the-
right-...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/739464-nobody-has-the-right-to-not-
be-offended-that-right)

------
Yunk
This is exactly the topic I've been pondering recently. I encountered the same
kind of problem just within CS during an interview.

Personally, I went back further in the domain to avoid admitting I never had
more than zero interest in what RFC writers chose to call something. Really, I
view domains as bastions of useless information aside from the harvestable
concepts for problems in other domains.

But I am beginning to suspect the industry has 'matured' into the same crap as
the auto industry.

I'm curious if others have comments on remaining a generalist in this
environment?

------
nnq
I agree with Djerassi that the term "polymath" is confusing and detrimental. I
think it's so because it describes what kind of knowledge one has, not what
function that knowledge provides.

 _' Deep integrators'_ I think would be a better term, as opposed to the _'
shallow integrators'_ that we call _' integrators'_ today and that know a
little about a lot and excel about making lots of conspicuous connections. As
opposed to a 'shallow integrator', a 'deep integrator' knows a lot about a lot
and excels about having meaningful contributions in a lot of areas and making
connections that are deep but mostly inconspicuous (for example, we'll never
know what part of the skills acquired while learning chemistry and of the
connections made between chemistry and writing made him a better writer, but I
am sure this part of "inconspicuous deep connections" exists).

------
Xcelerate
I'm not quite sure they're gone. He doesn't quite fit the definiton of a
polymath, but Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to mind as someone who has been
successful in many disparate areas. And Elon Musk has a BS in physics, co-
founded PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla, all of which are quite different from each
other.

Some kinds of research necessitate knowledge in a lot of different fields. My
work is in molecular dynamics simulations, which requires a mix of chemical
engineering, chemistry, physics, materials science, mathematics, and computer
science. The school I attend even offers a minor titled "Interdisciplinary
Graduate Minor in Computational Science".

I think part of the problem is that people don't want someone who is _kind of_
good at everything; they'd rather have someone who is an expert at one thing.
My undergraduate advisor told me to not put my undergrad athletic achievements
on my grad school application; he said it would be seen as a detriment (I
ignored him). But I've often found some of the best people in their fields are
also the best at many other endeavors, because it is their work ethic and
perseverance that pushes them beyond whatever their natural genetic limit is,
and these traits are common to whatever it is they attempt to master.

------
gilgoomesh
Sure, things were easy when no one knew what an atom was, let alone electrons,
orbitals and energy states.

As for whether there are polymaths anymore...

Most research engineers and applied scientists working on large complex builds
are polymaths in the classical sense: they know their chemistry, physics,
mathematics, thermodynamics, materials science and also programming, controls
systems, communications and 3D modelling.

In a non-classical sense...

You can now be a generalist in a single field. There's enough knowledge in a
single field like semiconductor manufacturing that you can choose a different
specialisation each week and never run out in your lifetime.

------
redthrowaway
This strikes me as the startup to end all startups: make the acquisition of
new knowledge less dependent on the acquisition of old knowledge. I haven't
the foggiest clue how you'd accomplish that, but the person who did would
build the next Google.

~~~
nnq
You just made me willing to resurrect a months old pet project that is exactly
about this :) I previously labelled it as "too geeky to be commercially
viable" but maybe with a different interface it might turn into some kind of
usable service with and adds based or subscription based profit model and
shit-load of personal data useful for deep psychological profiling by third
parties (caugh...).

But I don't have high hopes of creating the next Google... the idea itself
cools as it may be it's unpatentable and has most likely been independently
invented elsewhere. The technology already exists and once the idea gets out,
the likes of Google would definitely have a huge competetitive advantage by
implementing it on top and integrating it with their existing
infrastructure... so I still can't imagine any way a small startup can make
profit out of this.

Anyway, I won't say more but I'll start slowly resurrecting it, and if I don't
get any useful business ideas in the meantime, I'll get it to the point where
it's a nice cool opensource-project that people can start to play with it to
know at least that the idea hasn't just withered and died in my head...

------
VLM
You can't be a polymath by choice. Its merely a label other people apply.

Start with the big set of everyone. Then select the subset of people with
hobbies (terminally boring people live to work... perhaps exclude the
seriously ill) Some fraction of those are interesting (watching TV doesn't
count, boring). Some fraction of those interesting hobbies are something
they're good at (my flute playing makes dogs howl in pain, frankly I don't
care I'm having fun even if no one listening is having fun). Some fraction of
those hobbies that are interesting where they have skill have some public
component, like the article examples of writing books and holding lecture
series. Edited to add another level, people that have very public interesting
hobbies that are highly talented, they might get public attention, which is
rarer than you'd think.

Then, that tiny little subset, some of them, get labeled as polymaths.

------
legulere
> because breaking new ground is so much harder.

I don't think that this is true. Most things seem easier than they were once
they were done. It has a little bit to do with how in NP-complete problems
finding a solution is really hard, but once you have the solution, testing
that it is right is really easy and that the solution looks very straight-
forward.

Another nice story showing this concept is the egg of columbus:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus)

------
GuiA
Heh. I'm not really buying it.

Knowledge is not broken up into clearly defined sections: "music", "history",
"mathematics", "astronomy", and so on. Every field seeps into the others, and
advancements don't just happen in one single field. Take a random book about
history, for example: in it you'll find history of course, but also most
likely economics, geography, literature; maybe even some biology, zoology,
etc.

I think knowledge works on a compound interest model: the more you learn
today, the more you'll be able to learn tomorrow- regardless of the field. Of
course, it's much harder to switch from English literature to mathematics than
from mathematics to physics. But in a general manner, creativity is creativity
and problem solving is problem solving no matter the work that you do.

I know PhDs in mathematics who are also expert violinists, computer scientists
who could live from their painting if they wanted, and so on. Again, the
boundaries are artificial. The only limiting factors, as noted in the article,
are curiosity, patience, and perseverance.

One thing to take into account is that not everyone is putting all their
achievements out for the world to see. I know a wonderful pianist who only
plays for family and friends; most of his coworkers would probably be
surprised to learn that not only is he an excellent programmer, but also an
excellent musician. Similarly, people paint, read, play music, etc. outside of
their day job, without making it a point of labeling themselves as
"polymaths". I would call most of the mentor figures that I've had in my short
career polymaths (expert skills in more than 3 "fields", as evidenced by
published books, papers, expertise recognized by peers in that field, etc.),
but that's not the word they'd use to describe themselves.

I'm 24, and not only am I a much better computer scientist (my main
discipline) now that I was when I was 17 or 12 (when I started programming), I
am also much better at many other things: writing, drawing, playing music,
knowledge of history, literature, etc. Contrary to the accepted common wisdom,
I don't expect that to stop at all with age- many people (eg. my PhD advisor,
my first boss, etc.) are in their 40s, 50s, 60s and still produce work with
ever increasing depth and breadth. I aspire to be like them. There's
definitely something to be said for the importance of mentors and models in
our daily life- something that I really liked about the academic model.

Maybe it is becoming harder to stay focused on work than it was 100 years ago
(also 100 years ago a lot of intellectuals came from wealth or were supported
by it, and had less busy days than we do). Nowadays, we have YouTube and
Netflix and reddit and hacker news and all that other crap that pushes us to
just sit on the couch and do nothing if we don't monitor ourselves. Not that
they're bad in themselves (as can attest my HN karma), we just need to be
aware of the time we spend on it. A half hour of mindless browsing here and
there is fine; an entire evening is bad. I keep a list of activities I
consider "constructive" (eg. read a book, program, draw, watch a documentary,
play chess, exercise, etc.) and throughout my free time I try to make sure the
vast majority of my activities belong on the list. I just spent a few hours
working on algorithm problems, and now I am spending a bit of time on HN
before dinner- not too bad. There used to be a time where I would spend an
entire Saturday playing video games or hanging out on internet forums, which
is was a complete net loss intellectually speaking. Again, compound interest.

One thing that my mom would repeat to me all the time as a kid is that the
brain is like a muscle: if you don't exercise it, it gets weaker. And it's not
about doing a big exercise once a year- it's about daily perseverance.
Fortunately, it's never too late to get started.

------
stillsut
This strikes me as a problem of acquiring _recognition by peers in academia_ ,
not of making actually useful contributions/products in an inter-disciplinary
field. Someone mentioned Musk, but I think there's a sharply increasingly
amount of lesser known Edisonian tinkerers and engineers turning out useful
ideas and products for customers, they just aren't going to win the Nobel
prize.

