If you find this interesting, you might enjoy this old interview with the founder of the CLT, a competitor to the SAT that's intended to create incentives for schools to teach a more classical curriculum: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/philosophy-of/educating...
A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
21–30 of 82 posts
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#22I've been on the fence about generalists vs specialists debate for a while now. Although people love to bring up examples of outstanding geniuses like da Vinci, it seems society as a whole moves towards specialists. Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better. So I'm not so sure how useful are these efforts to educate new generations of polymaths.
Hard to publish interdisciplinary stuff in scientific journals when it's usually shot down by disciplinary specialists who don't get it
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#23One of the best things going at my Uni (Cornell) in my mind is not that they have a data science major [1] but that they have a data science minor that goes with anything from literature to biology [2].
[1] not sure I, as an applications programmer, want to hire that person because they're too focused on writing the April 2024 sales report and not on developing the process to make the monthly sales report.
[2] (talk about putting your skills and knowledge on wheels!
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created... that's the physics of this.
Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again, most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need encouragement at all.
Almost everyone is a curious polymath until institutions beat it out of them. We could start simply by nourishing curiosity
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#25just sounds like teaching more students philosophy, but now the dominant philosophy is systems theory. which i super agree with. systems are relevant everywhere from literature to engineering.
i agree with everyone else who has said true polymathy can't be taught.
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#26If you find this interesting, you might enjoy this old interview with the founder of the CLT, a competitor to the SAT that's intended to create incentives for schools to teach a more classical curriculum: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/philosophy-of/educating...
I'm both hopeful and skeptical about that kind of thing.
On one hand I think one of the smartest things you can do is look at things from the widest perspective in time and space (I told somebody once that "I'd like to be somebody that someone from 3000 years ago could understand")
On the other hand many of those programs are pushed by people who are closed minded.
When it comes to philosophy the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates can still come across as really fresh. As much as you might hear about Euclid's Elements if you self-study math, I think Elements is a complete waste of time in 2024.
I made a journey from being an anime fan to a sinophile and lately I've been meditating on how the Asian collection at my Uni is one of the largest in the US but is dwarfed by the National Library of China. Important works are not in translation or the translations are poor. Books on Chinese mythology in English don't even agree on who the important figures are, it's like you get one book on the Greek myths that never mentions Hercules and another that mentions Apollo.
The more I learn about the sinosphere the more I realize just how ignorant I am. Western "Great Books" are great don't get me wrong but they only tell you part of the story.
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created... that's the physics of this.
Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again, most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need encouragement at all.
They don't have to actively cultivate it but they should remove the walls between it. There's a lot of red tape/administrative confusion at most schools if you want to do anything interdisciplinary, especially if you want to cross more than two disciplines. Institutions should be more like buffets for the polymath. If I want to interlink say landscape architecture, sculpture, acoustics, materials science and biology I shouldn't need more than one signoff much less the 5 it would probably take to do work in something like that at most universities.
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created... that's the physics of this.
Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again, most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need encouragement at all.
There's a difference between "Create polymaths from scratch" or "Create a polymath degree" (oxymoron, honestly) and just "Let's have a learning environment that allows it".
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#29I've been on the fence about generalists vs specialists debate for a while now. Although people love to bring up examples of outstanding geniuses like da Vinci, it seems society as a whole moves towards specialists. Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better. So I'm not so sure how useful are these efforts to educate new generations of polymaths.
Hard to publish interdisciplinary stuff in scientific journals when it's usually shot down by disciplinary specialists who don't get it
Lots of crap too as well as stuff that is hard to characterize.
I like this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou
who basically plays the same game as Derrida. Except Derrida plays it very sloppily even if you might blame yourself for not understanding it because he is analyzing a difficult text in German in French and now you're reading a bad translation in English.
Badiou on the other hand will mash up Marxism with difficult problems in math such as the Continuum Hypothesis. Unlike Derrida there's no doubt that he really understands the math and he did the hard work with the precision of continental analytic philosophy. He irritates many of the people who are irritated by Derrida for the same reasons except at the level of details Badiou is impeccable which would all the more infuriating if somebody tries to engage with it in order to refute it.
(Funny I found Badiou's concept of singulation to be very relevant to ontology in computing, particularly the distinction between individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)) and categories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language) in Wikipedia, particularly given that something can be an individual and a category at the same time... Which twists systems like OWL into knots.)
Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
#30> If one is looking for a single label to encompass many of the new foundations – perhaps to form a new school or department – I would suggest Systems. What about good old philosophy? Philosophy already has a long tradition of birthing new sciences, a long tradition of encouraging polymath thinking and a long tradition of estabilishing foundational ways of thinking.
Philosophy degrees can be designed in this way. Various “philosophy of X” courses to explore. Logic and theory of computation are typically found here.