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A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

paulrcohen.github.io

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Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#41

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

staticautomatic wrote: post #16
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #11

... would be good. But it's been a decade and I think we're further from a society of polymaths now than we were then. I'm lucky enough to have been able to afford a constant trickle of college classes for the last 20 years. It's awesome. I get so much more out of it than my younger full-time classmates are. But it requires a lot of sacrifice. I probably wouldn't be on this path if I had had kids, for instance. So as…

I think there may always be too much socioeconomic pressure against it in modern industrial society for it to become normalized.

I see what you mean, but I'm reluctant to agree with "always."

As technology gets better at eliminating jobs, we may see a socioeconomic pressure towards remaining pivot-ready by constantly broadening one's capabilities... A world where as soon as you have a job you start training for your next one on the side because they just don't last that long. Making such a lifestyle broadly accessible would mean some significant changes from where we are now, but in the long run paying for all that school and tolerating all that time-off to attend it might end up being cheaper than the cost of the unrest associated with resisting change.

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#43

Post by Quekid5 »

analog31 wrote: post #34
alganet wrote: post #19

> 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.

Physics is like this too. An odd thing about physics is that it doesn't have very many of its own techniques or tools, so we have to go outside of our field if we want to solve any nontrivial problem -- theoretical or experimental. For instance I didn't take any electronics or programming classes beyond "101" level, but have ended up using both extensively in my later work. At my present workplace, I've noticed that…

I don't disagree with this characterization of studying physics, but there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in. (Not exclusive to physicists, obviously, it's just a lot of public science communicators are physicists.)

EDIT: Most noticeably from the absolute garbage code I had to make work that these 'genius coders' produced. They were good at physics, but they should never have written any code if it could have been prevented.

EDIT#2: And an adjacent poster "FredPret" demonstrated it perfectly. Let's derive Evolution from particle physics... and go! (Sean Carroll is a good antidote to this attitude... he knows there are levels of description that are useful.)

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#44

Post by syndicatedjelly »

mschuster91 wrote: post #36

> Universities have an opportunity and an obligation to train polymaths. The opportunity comes from the emergence of new foundations that unify fields. The obligation arises because humanity’s pressing problems are not neatly confined within academic disciplines. However, the divisive organizations of academic departments and curricula make it hard for faculty and students to understand systemic problems such as clim…

Why is the author responsible for solving the "elephant in the room" of affordability? The rest of your comment is about how politicians and capitalists have completely hijacked the mission of education - why are they not held more accountable for fixing it? It seems like excuses are constantly made for those responsible for education's conversion into a means of resupply for employers i.e. "capitalists be capitalizing, whatcha gonna do". Meanwhile, the people actually pointing out the problems are immediately criticized for not solving the issue, as if there's even a single solution or group of solutions that will reform the economy into whatever idealist society people dream of.

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#45

Post by KPGv2 »

Quekid5 wrote: post #43
analog31 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics is like this too. An odd thing about physics is that it doesn't have very many of its own techniques or tools, so we have to go outside of our field if we want to solve any nontrivial problem -- theoretical or experimental. For instance I didn't take any electronics or programming classes beyond "101" level, but have ended up using both extensively in my later work. At my present workplace, I've noticed that…

I don't disagree with this characterization of studying physics, but there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in. (Not exclusive to physicists, obviously, it's just a lot of public science communicators are physicists.) EDIT: Most noticeably from the absolute garbage code I had to make work that these 'genius coders' produc…

> there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in

It's interesting the converse is true: techbros often think they would've excelled in physics PhD programs

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#46

Post by KPGv2 »

EstanislaoStan wrote: post #3
greekanalyst wrote: post #2

Great piece. One of the best places cultivating this type of polymathy today is Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program. https://symsys.stanford.edu/

I'll also plug St. John's College. https://www.sjc.edu

I'll plug The University of Texas, specifically the Natural Sciences and Liberal Arts colleges (COLA and CONS). This is because they used to be the same college, and as such have loads of slots for elective courses and often you'll find students from one taking classes in the other college.

I was able to complete degrees in COLA and a CONS simultaneously in four years with one of those four years being study abroad studying one subject to the exclusion of everything else because of it. When I graduated, I had studied two foreign languages and taken elective/upper div courses in poetry, immigration policy, ethics, mathematics, and computer science.

Unless things have drastically changed since I graduated, it still holds true for UT in particular, and is one reason I consider my education to have been so great.

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#47

Post by syndicatedjelly »

A few books which I enjoyed that are somewhat on the subject of polymathy:

- The Polymath by Waqas Ahmed. This one directly discusses polymathy in history, and how our "natural state" really is of that of the polymath, not the specialist. A nice book that helped me get past some mental blocks and really embrace learning whatever it is I'm interested in, without reservations on what others may think about such "distractions".

- The Creative Way by Rick Rubin. This masterpiece is written by a legendary musical producer who has probably worked with one of your favorite Western musicians at some point. His Zen-inspired approach to creativity and acceptance of ideas, wherever they may come from, is an essential tool in any polymath's toolbox.

- How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson. I really enjoyed learning how the world-changing inventions that we take for granted were often invented by creatively gluing together wildly divergent ideas, to ultimately make something that appears deceptively simple.

The key takeaway for me is that anyone and everyone can be a polymath, with the correct attitude. Learning is not a skill reserved only for the most intelligent and capable - everyone is capable of learning anything they want. Some people may be more naturally skilled, but that doesn't preclude the rest of us from participating.

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#48

Post by FredPret »

analog31 wrote: post #34
alganet wrote: post #19

> 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.

Physics is like this too. An odd thing about physics is that it doesn't have very many of its own techniques or tools, so we have to go outside of our field if we want to solve any nontrivial problem -- theoretical or experimental. For instance I didn't take any electronics or programming classes beyond "101" level, but have ended up using both extensively in my later work. At my present workplace, I've noticed that…

Once you know the foundation of things, it’s much easier to build on that than if you start with a higher abstraction

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#49

Post by Quekid5 »

KPGv2 wrote: post #45
Quekid5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with this characterization of studying physics, but there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in. (Not exclusive to physicists, obviously, it's just a lot of public science communicators are physicists.) EDIT: Most noticeably from the absolute garbage code I had to make work that these 'genius coders' produc…

> there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in It's interesting the converse is true: techbros often think they would've excelled in physics PhD programs

Oh, it absolutely is. AFAICT it's universal for "experts" (whatever that means) in any given field.

(Self-referentially: Even for me... So take what I said above with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure this has solid research behind it.)

Re: A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]

#50

Post by analog31 »

Quekid5 wrote: post #43
analog31 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physics is like this too. An odd thing about physics is that it doesn't have very many of its own techniques or tools, so we have to go outside of our field if we want to solve any nontrivial problem -- theoretical or experimental. For instance I didn't take any electronics or programming classes beyond "101" level, but have ended up using both extensively in my later work. At my present workplace, I've noticed that…

I don't disagree with this characterization of studying physics, but there is a very noticeable tendency for physicists to expect their expertise to transfer to fields they are very definitely not experts in. (Not exclusive to physicists, obviously, it's just a lot of public science communicators are physicists.) EDIT: Most noticeably from the absolute garbage code I had to make work that these 'genius coders' produc…

It's certainly not exclusive to physicists. The syndrome is called "engineer disease," maybe just because engineers outnumber physicists.

Garbage code isn't exclusive to physicists. The coders often complain when they have to deal with code from other coders.

And physicists gonna code. The last nontrivial problem to be solved without computation was probably solved sometime in the 1930s. And the most powerful "physics software" is a coding stack.

In my own case I've made a career long effort to learn good coding practices, but I don't expect my code to go straight into production.

As for deriving evolution from particle physics, I don't think I've known a physicist who would recommend that.

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