> There are, of course, some good reasons why we might be hesitant to pursue multiple interests. One is the fear that we might spread ourselves too thinly if we devote ourselves to more than one avocation. With a divided attention, we would fail to achieve success in any domain – the idea that the “Jack of all trades is the master of none”.
My personal experience as a jack-of-all-trades is that if I try to specialise, I dry up creatively and get less effective.
In retrospect, many polymaths look like an expert in only one field because they more or less invented it. (Chomsky synthesized computation and lingustics into computational linguistics; Helmhotz synthesized physics, medicine, psychology, and philosophy to help found modern psychophysics; Frege, Russell, and Whitehead synthesized logic and mathematics into, uh, mathematics.)
Another issue seems to be assuming that all or at least one of the fields is a science (or even a hard science), but this isn't the case. Paul Robeson has been cited as a polymath due to his contribution across several dramatic arts, law degree, his political activism, and football career.
I.e. on one extreme every Expert is a jack of all trades that hasn't reached acknowledgement in more fields. A little absurd, but not as absurd as the other extreme: that all jack of all trades that reach expertise in a field simultaneously get acknowledgement in enough fields to be a Polymath.
The only evidence I see in the article towards that question is the analysis of arts hobbies in Nobel prize winners vs average scientists.