Why We Need Polymaths Today

Today, we live in a world of specialization. When we enter university, we are expected to choose a major whereby we obtain a degree in one field-or obtain certification for a trade-, telling our future employer that we have the requirements-i.e. the expertise- to do the job. This idea may sound old, but it is actually quite recent. During the Renaissance, professions as well differing fields of knowledge began to explode from out of the constraint of the trivium- grammar, logic and rhetoric, and quadrivium- number, geometry, music and cosmology- of the middle-ages. Initially, the Liberal Arts expanded the seven fields to include history, classical literature, poetry and Greek, but it ended up not only lessening the interest of the sacred sciences- like Alchemy- but created an unbalanced obsession with modern materialistic science.  

When the enlightenment came onto the scene with the complete purging of the old guild system, new ideas of education began to spring in conjunction with the spread of laissez-faire capitalism. The perfect analogy to describe what it was, would be the assembly line: imagine kids grouped according by age are sitting on a conveyor belt and being pushed along inside a factory. Standing in specifically assigned positions are teachers and professors whose unique job is entirely unlike every other’s job. As the kids approach the factory workers, they do their duty: filling equations, formulas, definitions, diagrams, graphs, maxims, dates and deadlines inside their heads. Those who fail to meet the standards of the factories requirements, are either shipped to another factory or are labelled as ‘incapable of proper instruction’. But to those who pass each of the factory workers and have their heads, ‘fixed’, that’s where the real fun starts: each child- now adult- enters a larger factory- which is really nothing else than a much larger version of where they just were. The instructions at the entrance are as follows: ‘Welcome to the Real factory. In here you will have the choice of many positions around our conveyor belt- from doctor, lawyer, politician, engineer, police officer, to scientist. There is no worry about whether you can speak the language of your other colleagues or not: your purpose in life is to play your part in society by the profession you choose and to fulfill the needs of others as they come down the conveyor belt. You must increase the speed at which our factory is working. We cannot survive without each and every one of you. There is too much competition from other factories on this planet for us to rest. And if we ever entertain one thought, one dream to suddenly stop, all of our endeavors since time immemorial will mean nothing.’

 

 

 

What’s funny about this analogy- other than the fact that it is true- is when the instructions say, ‘… by the profession you choose…’ To make it clearer, imagine a parent shopping with their kid, giving them the option between buying three different shirts the kid definitely doesn’t want. The parent thinks giving them a choice will make them willing to give into what the parent wants his or her kid to wear. Unfortunately, they are right. When the kid makes their choice, they really had no choice to begin with: their choices were chosen for them. And that- in sum- is the life that we live now and it what was formulated first by the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes and eventually slightly changed and implemented by John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson. It is called the social- contract.    

The second important element of the analogy is when it says, “There is no worry about whether you can speak the language of your other colleagues or not”. In other words, it is perfectly fine if you remain completely ignorant about other subjects which may very well-gasp- open your mind. To do so will jeopardize your employment, infect your expertise and tempt you away from your profession. Nothing can be further from the truth. In this article, I argue why we need polymaths before the complete segmentation and slavery of our society is complete.

First of all, what is a polymath? According to many definitions, a polymath is either someone who knows a lot about many different subjects, or someone who has many interests. It is really another word for a Renaissance man/woman. Many famous figures both east and west have been famous polymaths: Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Francis Bacon, Aristotle, Goethe, Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Al- Ghazzali, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the list goes on. Jefferson alone was an agriculturalist, anthropologist, architect, astronomer, botanist, classicist, diplomat, educator, ethnologist, farmer, geographer, horseman, inventor, lawyer, lexicographer, linguist, mathematician, meteorologist, musician, naturalist, numismatist, paleontologist, philosopher, political philosopher, scientist, statesman, violinist and writer. The list is extremely impressive.

 

 

After reading it, many may be tempted to think that figures such as Jefferson were innately geniuses and it would be nearly impossible for anyone to reach that level of mastery. I argue the opposite: because the term ‘genius’ is very subjective and means different things to different people, one should not worry about whether one is a genius or not. In fact, even people who have a talent tend to either not to be interested in their talent or are arrogant about it and due to abandoning any activity from their talent, lose it. What is more important than talent is passion: the passion that overrides laziness, self-doubt and self-diagnoses. The passion that in other eyes of other is insanity. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

But as I argue, anyone can hear the music. The melodies all of fields and subject are different voices of the same song, singing in harmony. Not only do they complement each other, but they in fact inhabit each other’s melody if one listens carefully. Let’s take mathematics for example. Dreamers are stressed by their too abstract ideas and many scientists hate their fancying with deductive reasoning. But consider: the history of mathematics, the beauty of the Fibonacci sequence in the natural world, music theory, the golden- ratio used in painting and architecture, fractals used on computers, Arabesque, modern logic, iambic-pentameter and quantum physics. All involve mathematics and if anyone wants to have a complete knowledge of poetry, psychology, art, religion, computers, philosophy, history, science, eventually, one will need to be acquainted with mathematics. And after one delves into the world of math, you will not only become more knowledgeable, but will learn to appreciate and maybe love math by the fact that you were able to make a connection to something foreign with something that you already loved. Seeing the hidden connections between seemingly different fields of knowledge, is the joy of being a polymath.

 

Fractals are patterns which repeat themselves infinitely at many levels.
They can be found not only in leaves, but in tress, rivers, coastlines,
mountains, clouds, hurricanes and sea shells. 

 

 But this ‘bridging’ between other fields is not only what curious people should be doing in their spare time: this is what we as a society should be doing at large. We are faced with many problems in the world such as terrorism, global warming, disease and prejudice of many kinds. For example, to think that we can help the conflict that has been going on for at least a decade now in the middle-east with just politics is heading- and has been- for disaster. It is impossible to assume that we can make things better there and understand what is happening, without knowledge of Arabic literature, the Arabic language, Islam, Islamic history, the differing schools of Islamic law, Islamic art and Islamic science. Such problems require not just experts or collaboration among experts of differing fields, but citizens of the world who are cultured and educated about all the factors that come into play. If we are all still dedicated to the idea of progress, it cannot be possible without polymaths.

 

Arabesque is a form of Islamic Art based on geometrical designs which
reveal the underlying mathematical beauty of reality.

 

But more alarming- and more deadly of a problem- is the segmentation that has taken place post-renaissance between the arts and the sciences. Today, this tension is symbolized by the ‘conflict’ between religion and science: we have many individuals who believe that religion and science have never had and can never have any contact with each other. It shows complete historical illiteracy because it fails to take into account many of the figures of the scientific revolution- Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton- who believed in God and the entire Islamic Golden Age with mathematics, medicine, astronomy, anatomy, chemistry, for which God was their main reason for pursuing knowledge. What the Muslims did between 800 and 1200 A.D had an inseparable influence on our Renaissance. And if we can make people better understand the relationship between science and religion, such a relationship can also be understood between science and the arts.

Many would say we are far from the renaissance and that it is impossible for things to ever return to that period or for us to improve. But there have been some improvements: there are many blogs, articles and YouTube videos dealing with Polymaths and how we need more of them in our society (I recommend watching this Tedtalk by Ella Saltmarshe:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwkkpROxp4).

In Eric R. Kandel’s fascinating book published in 2012, “The Age of Insight”, Eric explores how in the cultural center of Europe around the early 20^th century, Viennese scientists from Freud, Schnitzler and artists from Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele influenced one another in each other’s field and both dealt with aesthetic and psychological questions from the nature of the unconscious, to how people perceive art physiologically, psychologically and emotionally. Professor Kandel is well-versed in Neurobiology, Behavior and Art History and this book not only proves his mastery in more than one field, but demonstrates the amazing things can happen when collaboration occurs between the arts and sciences.

 

 

In one of Aldous Huxley’s great Lectures from 1959 titled, “Integrate Education”, Huxley argues that we need a pontifex maximus or a bridge maker, who can bring all the fields of knowledge together: “…what we need to do is to arrange marriages or rather to bring back into their originally married state, the different departments of knowledge and feeling which have been arbitrarily separated and made to live in their own monastic cells, in isolation” (The Human Situation, 7). But, we should not rely on another person to make the change that needs to be made: we can become well versed in numerous subjects and whether we decide to become a renaissance man/woman or a specialist, we should never falter to see the connections that lie within all the fields that exist.

 

 

I do not deny that we have made enormous gains through the work of specialists. Specialists have in many ways allowed for deep investigation, ingenious innovation and new perspectives. But imagine what can be done, when all the melodies of the world, can sing in harmony with each other.