The Last Days of the Polymath (2009)

http://youtu.be/05WS0WN7zMQ

There does seem to exist a particular breed of "intellectual" who not only confuses the two, but seemingly believes that conceptual understanding is merely an unpleasant side effect one must endure in order to achieve the ultimate goal, which is to grow one's vocabulary (and grow it beyond recognition, and, more importantly, beyond scrutiny from mere-mortals).

Jargon creep is inevitable when we go expert-crazy, which, it seems to me, is more about marking territory and protecting one's clique than any legitimate concern for the advancement of knowledge.

> "It's simply no longer possible to be an expert in more than one field."

This is a lazy straw-man argument (1).

Of course, experts are necessary, and we'd only go so far before we start running in circles if not for dedicated individuals... But how does this negate the value of polymaths?

This is like saying that wheels on an airplane are completely useless, because wings have been meticulously crafted for the sole purpose of flying. -- The two serve different purposes. The plane can't fly without the one, but it won't get off the ground without the other.

A polymath will never acquire the depth of understanding of an expert, but neither can the expert have access to the more varied sources of inspiration / patterns of thought that a polymath acquires through breadth of experience. It seems obvious to me that the two personality types complement each other (like "the two cultures" -- problem solvers and theory builders).

If anything, given the insurmountable amount of knowledge we've gathered on any given topic, now more than ever we need to actively research more effective means of cross-pollinating, or run the risk of academic myopia.

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(1) or maybe not a straw-man... a red herring? We might need to bring in an expert in argumentation theory -- preferably one with extensive research in the field of informal fallacies -- as I am clearly not qualified to comment one way or the other.

Personally, I went back further in the domain to avoid admitting I never had more than zero interest in what RFC writers chose to call something. Really, I view domains as bastions of useless information aside from the harvestable concepts for problems in other domains.

But I am beginning to suspect the industry has 'matured' into the same crap as the auto industry.

I'm curious if others have comments on remaining a generalist in this environment?

'Deep integrators' I think would be a better term, as opposed to the 'shallow integrators' that we call 'integrators' today and that know a little about a lot and excel about making lots of conspicuous connections. As opposed to a 'shallow integrator', a 'deep integrator' knows a lot about a lot and excels about having meaningful contributions in a lot of areas and making connections that are deep but mostly inconspicuous (for example, we'll never know what part of the skills acquired while learning chemistry and of the connections made between chemistry and writing made him a better writer, but I am sure this part of "inconspicuous deep connections" exists).

Some kinds of research necessitate knowledge in a lot of different fields. My work is in molecular dynamics simulations, which requires a mix of chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, materials science, mathematics, and computer science. The school I attend even offers a minor titled "Interdisciplinary Graduate Minor in Computational Science".

I think part of the problem is that people don't want someone who is kind of good at everything; they'd rather have someone who is an expert at one thing. My undergraduate advisor told me to not put my undergrad athletic achievements on my grad school application; he said it would be seen as a detriment (I ignored him). But I've often found some of the best people in their fields are also the best at many other endeavors, because it is their work ethic and perseverance that pushes them beyond whatever their natural genetic limit is, and these traits are common to whatever it is they attempt to master.

As for whether there are polymaths anymore...

Most research engineers and applied scientists working on large complex builds are polymaths in the classical sense: they know their chemistry, physics, mathematics, thermodynamics, materials science and also programming, controls systems, communications and 3D modelling.

In a non-classical sense...

You can now be a generalist in a single field. There's enough knowledge in a single field like semiconductor manufacturing that you can choose a different specialisation each week and never run out in your lifetime.

Start with the big set of everyone. Then select the subset of people with hobbies (terminally boring people live to work... perhaps exclude the seriously ill) Some fraction of those are interesting (watching TV doesn't count, boring). Some fraction of those interesting hobbies are something they're good at (my flute playing makes dogs howl in pain, frankly I don't care I'm having fun even if no one listening is having fun). Some fraction of those hobbies that are interesting where they have skill have some public component, like the article examples of writing books and holding lecture series. Edited to add another level, people that have very public interesting hobbies that are highly talented, they might get public attention, which is rarer than you'd think.

Then, that tiny little subset, some of them, get labeled as polymaths.

I don't think that this is true. Most things seem easier than they were once they were done. It has a little bit to do with how in NP-complete problems finding a solution is really hard, but once you have the solution, testing that it is right is really easy and that the solution looks very straight-forward.

Another nice story showing this concept is the egg of columbus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

Knowledge is not broken up into clearly defined sections: "music", "history", "mathematics", "astronomy", and so on. Every field seeps into the others, and advancements don't just happen in one single field. Take a random book about history, for example: in it you'll find history of course, but also most likely economics, geography, literature; maybe even some biology, zoology, etc.

I think knowledge works on a compound interest model: the more you learn today, the more you'll be able to learn tomorrow- regardless of the field. Of course, it's much harder to switch from English literature to mathematics than from mathematics to physics. But in a general manner, creativity is creativity and problem solving is problem solving no matter the work that you do.

I know PhDs in mathematics who are also expert violinists, computer scientists who could live from their painting if they wanted, and so on. Again, the boundaries are artificial. The only limiting factors, as noted in the article, are curiosity, patience, and perseverance.

One thing to take into account is that not everyone is putting all their achievements out for the world to see. I know a wonderful pianist who only plays for family and friends; most of his coworkers would probably be surprised to learn that not only is he an excellent programmer, but also an excellent musician. Similarly, people paint, read, play music, etc. outside of their day job, without making it a point of labeling themselves as "polymaths". I would call most of the mentor figures that I've had in my short career polymaths (expert skills in more than 3 "fields", as evidenced by published books, papers, expertise recognized by peers in that field, etc.), but that's not the word they'd use to describe themselves.

I'm 24, and not only am I a much better computer scientist (my main discipline) now that I was when I was 17 or 12 (when I started programming), I am also much better at many other things: writing, drawing, playing music, knowledge of history, literature, etc. Contrary to the accepted common wisdom, I don't expect that to stop at all with age- many people (eg. my PhD advisor, my first boss, etc.) are in their 40s, 50s, 60s and still produce work with ever increasing depth and breadth. I aspire to be like them. There's definitely something to be said for the importance of mentors and models in our daily life- something that I really liked about the academic model.

Maybe it is becoming harder to stay focused on work than it was 100 years ago (also 100 years ago a lot of intellectuals came from wealth or were supported by it, and had less busy days than we do). Nowadays, we have YouTube and Netflix and reddit and hacker news and all that other crap that pushes us to just sit on the couch and do nothing if we don't monitor ourselves. Not that they're bad in themselves (as can attest my HN karma), we just need to be aware of the time we spend on it. A half hour of mindless browsing here and there is fine; an entire evening is bad. I keep a list of activities I consider "constructive" (eg. read a book, program, draw, watch a documentary, play chess, exercise, etc.) and throughout my free time I try to make sure the vast majority of my activities belong on the list. I just spent a few hours working on algorithm problems, and now I am spending a bit of time on HN before dinner- not too bad. There used to be a time where I would spend an entire Saturday playing video games or hanging out on internet forums, which is was a complete net loss intellectually speaking. Again, compound interest.

One thing that my mom would repeat to me all the time as a kid is that the brain is like a muscle: if you don't exercise it, it gets weaker. And it's not about doing a big exercise once a year- it's about daily perseverance. Fortunately, it's never too late to get started.