Great article, particularly the books listed at the bottom. I have not read "Polymath," but I do have summaries of the latter two books in my online library of book summaries. Your readers might start there:
My first go to, instinctively, is to make it bigger. This drives my husband insane. MOUHAHAHA
My favourite quote of all time.
"There is an infinite, thrumming, unseen web that joins everything. Everything is connected to everything else… this fact is nearly impossible for us to grasp because we are just mollusks, shut up tight at the bottom of a dark, cold ocean, trying to make sense of stars we cannot even see."
via The Finder (whose character, Walter Sherman, also made it bigger), via Bones and The Locator series of two books written by Richard Greener, via Galactica.
When I describe the way I like to learn to folks, every now and then I'll mention that I think in a polymathic manner, but I definitely get why people might bristle if we call ourselves polymaths as such. The name has a meaning that isn't always clear, and people assume that you have to be an ultra-genius to think this way (of course, the whole point of what you and I both do is that this isn't the case).
I love the simple advice to try more things before specializing. Above everything else, I missed this concept when I was a kid, forced to choose a major at like age 15. "Let's do only this for the rest of your life", the system seemed to suggest to me.
Exactly right. I think you and I, knuckle dragging primates, demonstrate that anyone can embrace the mindset and stretch. I also find it very freeing when I give myself the permission to explore everywhere.
I'm writing an essay about liberal arts education and I think the answer is yes, as long as it's founded on the 7 classic liberal arts of the Trivium: Grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
We used a classical approach to homeschooling our two children based on the Trivium. 1-6th grade was considered vocabulary, 7-8th logic, and 9-12th rhetoric. This order is used throughout life - we learn the terms of new info, how the terms relate to each other, and understand well enough to explain to others. It was a literature based curriculum, and we studied Greek and Latin vocabulary. There was a bibliography of 1000 books divided into age levels, with a good number available through the library.
I really enjoyed learning and relearning with them.
I love polymathy. My background supports it—higher studies in engineering, philosophy, a PhD in economics, and a deep passion for history, biology and art. But my curiosity and desire to explore so many other fields sometimes make me wonder: am I, deep down, just a dilettante? A know-it-all, a busybody, always eager to weigh in, write, and talk about everything?
I love your background but not your conclusion. 😀 You use that term as a pejorative. I view that as fucking awesome. A friend of mine and I laugh about how many threads we can hold in different topics and then weave it into a cohesive conclusion.
To many it seems a know it all but I know I know so very little and always want to learn more even if that's 100x anyone else. It's not a flex for me. It's an aspiration.
Great article, particularly the books listed at the bottom. I have not read "Polymath," but I do have summaries of the latter two books in my online library of book summaries. Your readers might start there:
https://techratchet.com/2020/03/13/book-summary-range-why-generalist-triumph-in-a-specialized-world-by-daniel-epstein/
https://techratchet.com/2020/05/21/book-summary-where-good-ideas-come-from-by-steven-johnson/
Both are excellent, but I particularly like "Range."
Fantastic and thanks for sharing.
My first go to, instinctively, is to make it bigger. This drives my husband insane. MOUHAHAHA
My favourite quote of all time.
"There is an infinite, thrumming, unseen web that joins everything. Everything is connected to everything else… this fact is nearly impossible for us to grasp because we are just mollusks, shut up tight at the bottom of a dark, cold ocean, trying to make sense of stars we cannot even see."
via The Finder (whose character, Walter Sherman, also made it bigger), via Bones and The Locator series of two books written by Richard Greener, via Galactica.
That's a great quote and exactly right.
When I describe the way I like to learn to folks, every now and then I'll mention that I think in a polymathic manner, but I definitely get why people might bristle if we call ourselves polymaths as such. The name has a meaning that isn't always clear, and people assume that you have to be an ultra-genius to think this way (of course, the whole point of what you and I both do is that this isn't the case).
I love the simple advice to try more things before specializing. Above everything else, I missed this concept when I was a kid, forced to choose a major at like age 15. "Let's do only this for the rest of your life", the system seemed to suggest to me.
Exactly right. I think you and I, knuckle dragging primates, demonstrate that anyone can embrace the mindset and stretch. I also find it very freeing when I give myself the permission to explore everywhere.
Would you agree with the idea to get a formal liberal education as a foundation for specialization?
I'm writing an essay about liberal arts education and I think the answer is yes, as long as it's founded on the 7 classic liberal arts of the Trivium: Grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
There is a better version of the Trivium out there. Keiran Egan (RIP) improved this concept. Brandon Hendrickson is working to spread it.
We used a classical approach to homeschooling our two children based on the Trivium. 1-6th grade was considered vocabulary, 7-8th logic, and 9-12th rhetoric. This order is used throughout life - we learn the terms of new info, how the terms relate to each other, and understand well enough to explain to others. It was a literature based curriculum, and we studied Greek and Latin vocabulary. There was a bibliography of 1000 books divided into age levels, with a good number available through the library.
I really enjoyed learning and relearning with them.
Awesome. We homeschool our kids as well and are going to start working in more of the classics.
I love polymathy. My background supports it—higher studies in engineering, philosophy, a PhD in economics, and a deep passion for history, biology and art. But my curiosity and desire to explore so many other fields sometimes make me wonder: am I, deep down, just a dilettante? A know-it-all, a busybody, always eager to weigh in, write, and talk about everything?
I love your background but not your conclusion. 😀 You use that term as a pejorative. I view that as fucking awesome. A friend of mine and I laugh about how many threads we can hold in different topics and then weave it into a cohesive conclusion.
To many it seems a know it all but I know I know so very little and always want to learn more even if that's 100x anyone else. It's not a flex for me. It's an aspiration.
Nice! It's aways great to establish a foundation where we can start to think differently.
Fantastic!