Who all do we have as living polymaths on our planet? Any ideas?
The last days of the polymath
moreintelligentlife.com
The last days of the polymath
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Re: The last days of the polymath
#2Specialization doesn't mean you can't have polymaths. They just have to be sparser matrices.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#3Very interesting article! Worthy of my upvote. But at the same time I don't at all buy into its premise.
Literally every field I have even a passing interest in has got people at the top of it who express interest in multiple fields at once. In the web-related world there's Shaun Inman, who goes back and forth between music, web design, and creating video games. Or there's Ze Frank, who goes back and forth between writing and designing tools and music and video comedy and I don't know what else. In music there are a lot of people who specialize in many, many different things at once — either different types of music (multiple instruments, or multiple performance styles, or music production) — or actively in different fields at once. Peter Brotzmann, one of the best free jazz saxophonists, is also a graphic designer who's designed all of his albums to date. Tom Waits is a musician who acts and writes on the side. Auteur directors tend to be involved in five or six different fields at once: James Cameron is a masterful set/costume designer; David Lynch handles the audio production for his movies; and writes some of the music for it. Stand-up comic Louis CK writes, stars in, directs, and edits his show Louie, which is to some degree insane.
The problem with looking at the Internet for polymaths of the same caliber of Carl Djerassi is that the Internet generation is too young right now. Ze Frank, who is in some ways the grandfather of the modern Internet creative movement, is only thirty-eight years old. The real Internet generation, of the people who literally never existed in a world where the World Wide Web didn't, was born in 1990. They're twenty years old. They're me.
I can assure you as somebody who's closer to that generation than most of the users on that site: We're going to see an explosion of creativity the likes of which we haven't seen in decades, if ever. The kids I know in high school are busy writing, drawing, making music, arguing philosophy, arguing economics, doing pretty much everything and doing it all at once. Give it thirty years and I think you'll be flabbergasted at what we produce.
When I was eighteen I'd already published a novel, directed a play, written and co-performed a song, co-created said song's music video, performed and co-wrote a Harry Potter dub, wrote multiple essays, and designed a number of web sites. A friend of mine who's a year younger was keeping a political/economic blog and engaging in discussions pretty much everywhere. Yet another friend is a hypnotist, writer, and web designer who I might be making a documentary about this coming summer. The guy I live with, twenty-one, is a talented actor who's also written for the Colbert Report, interviewed celebrities, and in his free time sells tickets. Is that polymath enough for you?
Re: The last days of the polymath
#4Re: The last days of the polymath
#5I hope to become a polymath, but the (graduate school) system really isn't set up to produce them as such.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#6Very interesting article! Worthy of my upvote. But at the same time I don't at all buy into its premise. Literally every field I have even a passing interest in has got people at the top of it who express interest in multiple fields at once. In the web-related world there's Shaun Inman, who goes back and forth between music, web design, and creating video games. Or there's Ze Frank, who goes back and forth between wr…
I agree entirely. While I've specialized (and spent the vast majority of my time) in reverse-engineering, I also write fiction, do sound engineering, (used to) draw, have recently started playing the drums, etc. Am I particularly great at any of these? Not really -- at least not yet -- but that's ok.
As an aside, we've all heard the standard "jack of all trades" quote, but everyone always leaves out the last part of it, which I feel is most important, if only because of the way I can relate to it: Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#7I wonder if the definition of the polymath is changing as our accessable memory is moving outside of the brain. So, now it's not the person who knows a lot about a lot, but the person who can efficiently query the search engine in real time and has the ability to work with the information coming back from it.
After all, rote memorization was not the polymath's main strength anyway. Now we're just unburdening them to an even higher degree.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#8The last days? By whose definition? Not to discount Thomas Young at all, but I have no doubt that in the age of wikipedia you could find tens of thousands of people who could deliver that same address he did - myself included. I would argue heavily against the title of this article. These aren't the last days of the polymath, rather these are the days where we're so saturated with them that few stand out.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#9Very interesting article! Worthy of my upvote. But at the same time I don't at all buy into its premise. Literally every field I have even a passing interest in has got people at the top of it who express interest in multiple fields at once. In the web-related world there's Shaun Inman, who goes back and forth between music, web design, and creating video games. Or there's Ze Frank, who goes back and forth between wr…
No. It's not polymath enough because you haven't acquired the subtle art of impressing other people without coming off like someone who needs to brag about themselves or making already insecure people feel more insecure about themselves.
Without proper social-skills you are just a douche in lab coat/pocket-protector/drama club/hipster enclave. The true modern polymath, IMO are Frank Abagnale, Larry Ellison and Craig Ventor.
Re: The last days of the polymath
#10Very interesting article! Worthy of my upvote. But at the same time I don't at all buy into its premise. Literally every field I have even a passing interest in has got people at the top of it who express interest in multiple fields at once. In the web-related world there's Shaun Inman, who goes back and forth between music, web design, and creating video games. Or there's Ze Frank, who goes back and forth between wr…
I don't think the article would consider any of the people you listed polymaths. One of the article's criterion for being a polymath is that you have interests in diverse fields. A musician who can play several different instruments isn't showing much in the way of diversity. Neither is James Cameron, nor Louis CK, because the examples you cited all are tied together very naturally, and I would argue that being a great director probably means you _have_ to be a good set/costume designer too. And you can't just be really good to be considered a polymath--you have to be an expert. Thomas Young, from the article, showed that light was a wave in addition to a particle, _and_ contributed immensely to linguistics through helping to crack the Rosetta Stone. Making significant contributions or developments like Young's these days isn't possible. With the article's stringent criteria, I'd agree--what polymaths we have today aren't great compares to the ones we used to have, and they're just going to keep getting worse because it's hard to be an expert in anything intellectual nowadays, and it'll only get worse.