The Lost Age of Polymaths
- Safiyakhon Zulfikarova
- Mar 7
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 12
What is a polymath? By definition, a polymath is a person of broad knowledge or learning. In short — jack of all trades and a master of all too. If you think you haven’t heard of polymaths before, you are most likely to be wrong.
Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Benjamin Franklin, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were all prominent polymaths. They were musicians, scientists, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers all in one with their achievements, spanning various fields, testaments to the power of broad knowledge. However, you might also notice that all those names are old, at the very least. Polymaths were the primary thinkers, politicians and – by modern standards – celebrities of the bygone age. But where did they disappear?
Scientific specialisation is considered to have originated during the Scientific Revolution (16th/17th century in Europe). However, the division of labour appeared much earlier: it can be traced back to the stereotypical gender division of household work. Therefore, the question remains: what exactly prompted scientists and the elite to pursue specific professions? Most historians agree that it was a combination of causes, with the biggest reason being that the division of labour increases production. It is simply more productive and ultimately fruitful (from an economic perspective at least) to have a tiny but in-depth knowledge of something and have other people cover the rest.
“There is no alternative to specialisation in science, for the subject matter is so vast that progress requires a concentrated focus on a narrow problem for a protracted period of time.”
(Casadevall & Fang, 2014)
Transdisciplinary Science
Since specialisation has proven to be very rewarding in science and practically every other industry, no one has acted upon criticism of it after its introduction. But indeed, specialisation has many flaws. In academia, scientists, having acquired degrees and reputations, can never leave their field without losing almost everything they have worked for. And while the lack of mobility serves as a stabiliser for the industry, it strips science of the benefits of fresh ideas and groupthink.
Louis Pasteur made his breakthroughs in bacteriology without a medical license, which most physicians would’ve never made. More well-known, Marie Skłodowska-Curie made discoveries in both physics and chemistry, which are interrelated; however, modern scientists wouldn’t be able to do so. Most inventions and discoveries in the world were made at the intersection of various disciplines. Depriving science of generalism is to be depriving science of advancement.
The Future of Polymaths
Now that we, and many before us, have established that specialisation is inevitable but also imperfect, what can be done? Polymaths aren’t a threatened or extinct species, and thankfully, they can be easily brought back, with only one exception: not in their original form. It takes a lifetime for a modern scientist, musician or artist to achieve expertise in their field. It is unrealistic to expect them to excel in every other discipline. Nevertheless, just as musicians have an orchestra full of other instrumentalists, scientists need their fellows from other fields. Creating a closer coworking of great minds without making them obliged to the rules of an institution and the limits of solely one discipline can be the new polymathism.
(Though the idea in itself isn’t new, the House of Wisdom of Baghdad, the lost Library of Alexandria and ancient Nalanda all had a similar policy. However, modern universities and research centres create such rigid lines between their departments that a philosopher at Oxford may never see a physicist at that same Oxford, and both will never see the future prime minister who also studies at Oxford.)
While the allure of polymaths may seem like a phenomenon from the past, with luminaries like da Vinci and Curie standing as distant examples, the essence of polymathic thinking, the ability to traverse disciplines and generate novel insights at the intersections of knowledge, remains as potent and necessary as ever.
Citations
House of Wisdom. Feely, J.. Art Station. https://www.artstation.com/joefly
Polymath. (2024, April 5). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath
Casadevall, A., & Fang, F. C. (2014). Specialized Science. Infection and Immunity, 82(4),
1355-1360. https://doi.org/10.1128/IAI.01530-13
Odonkor, C., MD, MA (2018, August 9). What Happened to the Andrologist, Stomatologist and
Syphilologist? Voices From Doximity Network. https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/what-happened-to-the-andrologist-stomatologist-and-syphilologist-ef1e01c54267
Smith, A. (2002) The Wealth of Nations. Oxford, England: Bibliomania.com Ltd. [Web.]
Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2002564559.
Lumen Learning (n.d.). Division of Labor and Specialization. Introduction to Business.
Malone, T. W., Laubacher, R., & Johns, T. (n.d.). The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization.
Personal Productivity. https://hbr.org/2011/07/the-big-idea-the-age-of-hyperspecialization
Further reading:
Muse, T. (2023, November 5). 14 ISLAMIC POLYMATHS WHO SPARKED THE GOLDEN
AGE OF ISLAM. Islamic Polymaths. https://www.historyoasis.com/post/islamic-polymaths
Britannica (2024, February 27). Nalanda. History & Society.
If you want to read more about prominent polymaths:
Leonardo da Vinci, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Al-Biruni, Hildegard of Bingen, Ibn al-Haytham, Rabindranath Tagore, Mikhail Lomonosov, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alan Turing, Benjamin Franklin, John von Neumann, Omar Khayyam, Charles Sanders Peirce, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Asimov, Nicolaus Copernicus, René Descartes, Aristotle, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Averroes, Archimedes, George Washington Carver, Hypatia, Blaise Pascal, Africanus Horton, Wang Wei, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Paul Riquet, Leonhard Euler, Émilie du Châtelet, Thomas Edison, Florence Nightingale, Bertrand Russell, Nicole Oresme, Thomas Young, Sequoyah, Thomas Jefferson, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Maya Angelou.
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