The case for opsimaths

commonreader.substack.com

18 points·silt··6 comments

> opsimaths: smart people who carried on learning and achieved things when the timing and circumstances were right.

Perhaps then, we optimize our society by increasing the prevalence of the right circumstances.

What are those?

A degree of economic security strikes me as one, so that the would-be opsimath is not hustling extra shifts at work to keep the lights on. Another, access to information, is easier than ever--what is available through the Gutenberg Project, the Perseus Project, and many other such is just stunning to one who remembers the limitations of even good public libraries, the metropolises maybe excepted. Another, the attention of persons willing to hear them out and respond may be somewhat harder to get. Thirty years ago one had to write on paper and post a letter to send a message to someone.

It seems to me that one could add Tolstoy, who was 41 when he published War and Peace. The Cossacks, the only of his earlier works I've read, is very readable, but maybe not the sort of book to make a reputation on its own. And for my tastes, W.B. Yeats didn't hit his stride until he was about 45.

robert frost, classic late bloomer, wrote ts eliot a letter (unprompted) saying 'the problem with you is that you know 13 languages and all these texts but nothing about human experience'

eliot, an early genius, responded 'the problem with you is that you're stupid'

That has a distinctly apocryphal look. But thank you, I had forgotten how old Frost was when his first book appeared.

yeah, have never seen the direct quote myself either. I got it from david galenson, a labor economist who wrote a book about late genius

https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0304/features/index-poetic.htm...

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