A focus on arbitrarily separated fields of study is hindering progress. The solutions to the problems that we face today, and in the years ahead, will be implemented by skilled professionals, but they will be discovered by polymaths. And so, scholars need to start learning about the world by asking questions, rather than studying fields.
I'm not going to deny it and act modest. I can see what most other people cannot. I can truly see the big picture in the way that few can. I am not boasting here. It’s simply because I’m a polymath. I have a solid understanding of a lot of topics, which allows me to see a broad picture of how things are and how they should be, as well as how to get there. I see how all parts of the puzzle fit together, though my ability to actually move the pieces around is limited.
I’m not a polymath because I’m a genius, or at least I don’t think that my intelligence has all that much to do with it. I’m probably of average intelligence. However, our society destroys polymaths. I was lucky, or unlucky, that I didn’t fit into the standard education program. I had some rather unusual experiences that caused me to go about things differently. I ended up learning about the world in a very different way. But it wasn’t always such an unusual way.
Many researchers up until the early 1900s were to an extent polymaths. Hooke, who perhaps is best known for his work in physics, including optics and mechanics, is also the same person who coined the term “cell” for the basic unit of life. A great many thinkers throughout history were polymaths. But it’s simply not the case anymore, because even in academia, there is a tendency to train people for incredibly narrow fields.
A Crypto Example
A good example is my work with cryptoassets. A lot of people that develop so called cryptocurrencies are solid programmers. It’s been a real headache trying to make some basic contracts in solidity. People do this kind of stuff for a living and are wholly comfortable with it. However, they don’t necessarily understand economics and finance. Monetary theory is a complicated beast. There is a lot of disagreement between what constitutes good money.
I could go on for hours about the different views of monetary theory expressed by Aristotle, Plato, Marx, and so many others. I can explain the difference between money and currency, and what actually makes something a form of money rather than just an asset. But I’m also not as well versed in all of the theory as many economists in the world.
But what I can do is take my understanding of both of these fields and integrate them together to not only design a cryptoasset, but ensure that it has a high chance of becoming an actual cryptocurrency. And that’s the kind of thinking that I’m employing in projects like World Builder.
A Science Example
Another example is adapting work developed by Jeremy England, an MIT physicist, Taeer Bar-Yam, a complexity theorist, and others, into a unified piece. The core of the paper focuses on England's work, in which he developed a way to explain how entropy functions in certain open systems. To put it simply, generally "the laws of nature" say that things get messier over time. Life is weird. It's far away from that messy equilibrium. What England found was that matter can actually become more orderly, in certain instances. But he limited the application to molecular and cellular mechanics, and discussions relating to the origin of life. While this work alone is phenomenal, I was able to notice that his work had far reaching applications, in complexity theory, evolutionary theory, and astrobiology. I was able to see the bigger picture, simply because I wasn't focused on the narrow one. We have plenty of wonderful experts like England and Bar-Yam. We need more people who can see the whole forest.
Anyone Can Do It
Okay, so maybe not anyone, but I honestly think that the major difference between whether someone becomes a polymath or not is upbringing, rather than some kind of inherent trait. But even if there is a certain degree of aptitude or comfort level associated with why one might become a polymath, our education system really does make it prohibitive, as does our system of employment. Our entire childhood, into our early adult years is little more than grooming for a profession these days. We’re trained to focus on a single task, and do it efficiently and inexpensively so that companies can maximize results.
It’s useful for certain things, and there’s nothing wrong with being an expert in a single field. I’m amazed at the level of skill and dedication that some people devote to a profession. The traditional way that Japanese sushi chefs is a great example. But there are so many problems that we’re facing, and while it will likely take such trained people to implement the solutions to these problems, it will take polymaths to find them.
Final Thoughts
I really do think that the world is in need of more polymaths. There are just too many problems, and as many problems as have been solved over the years, the greatest test for humanity’s survival is very likely yet to have come. We’re not going to survive those solutions without more people who can see the bigger picture.
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash
