The Polymath: A Cultural History | Hacker News Reader

The Polymath: A Cultural History

literaryreview.co.uk

44 pointssignor_bosco5 comments

I've become a polymath and I never expected it. 4 years mechanical design Engineering, 3 years electrical design Engineering, and after 12 years casually Programming I got my first full time Programming job.

I have no idea what my next job will be.

I think Engineering, but I feel like that is a waste of my new Programming skills.

I obviously don't know you or your work but there is a difference betweeen someone whos is 'T shaped' with a core knowledge in one area and fairly knowledgeable in others, versus a polymath.

A polymath implies someone who has true mastery of multiple areas and has made meaningful contributions in multiple areas.

I also think it's rather unfair to compare ourselves with for example renaissance polymaths, the sheer volume of knowledge one would need to acquire in a specific field of study has grown several orders of magnitude. So with no disrespect to these historic figures the bar for being a 'master' in a specific field has also risen substantially taking much longer to reach.

That is an interesting point - to be an expert is much more difficult today.

However, I wonder how much of it is survivorship bias? Like the polymaths are generally forgotten because they suck at a lot of things. Every once in a while you get a genius interested in many things... that’s then exceptional and they are capable of learning many things?

I think there always has to be a filter applied with what is possible and what is probable in a individuals life when thinking about making choices for your daily life.

Great points. Do note that while a "sheer volume” approach to knowledge would indeed make becoming a polymath in today’s time quite intractable, there are other more efficient approaches to knowledge acquisition and synthesis that vastly decrease the amount of “things” you need to know in order to know.

There are many people today with fluid enough interactions with knowledge and the world to classify as polymaths. The might of our institutions can suppress the fact that such individuals even exist due to a high propensity towards linearization and other attempts at reducing complexity and chaos. Knowledge work is fundamentally chaotic as opposed to neat algorithmic assembly line tasks/models.

I am Xavier Waller, Mathematical Artist, and we have recently begun an initiative to show people how to think in what is referred to as an “omnidisciplinary” manner. The main idea behind omnidisciplinary thinking is that there are shared structures between our concepts (Roots). By tapping into those common structures, we get to take advantage of shared reasoning between domains. This is called taking an "omnidisciplinary leap”. The end result is that instead of learning say art and engineering, you get to think at the intersection of both to solve problems or reason in either. Ultimately, everything is a dynamical system and is information across, within, and between such systems. And there are only so many ways to propagate and structure signals.

We have just released a YouTube video showing a taste of how to use this in the real world. The link is here [1]. Keep in mind that thinking OMNI is for everyone of all capabilities and backgrounds, and not everyone is incredibly technical. To be accessible and inclusive means to tap into intuition first. Formal logic and mathematical representations come later after the intuition is conveyed.

Please also see the website here[2]. We are ramping that up to show people in various areas of society, in multiple capacities and use cases, and more how to think OMNI!

Also feel free to follow the newsletter at this link [3].We need more integrated and holistic approaches to solving problems to be more mainstream because just as learning multiple subjects as if they are separate takes way too long, solving the species' biggest problems one at a time as if they are separate also takes way too long. We need to think in an omnidisciplinary manner!

[1]: https://youtu.be/sCti2BMvqXA

[2]: mathis.art

[3]: https://art.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3e713d195d864abb...

A lighter term is "generalist".

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