TITLE: The Polymath as Intellectual Polygamist
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 27, 2014 11:39 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Carl Djerassi, quoted in
<A HREF="http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/edward-carr/last-days-polymath">
   The Last Days of the Polymath</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Nowadays people [who] are called polymaths are dabblers --
 are dabblers in many different areas.  I aspire to be an
 intellectual polygamist.  And I deliberately use that
 metaphor to provoke with its sexual allusion and to point
 out the real difference to me between polygamy and
 promiscuity.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

On this view, a
<A HREF="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dilettante">
   dilettante</A>
is merely promiscuous, making no real commitment to any love
interest.  A polymath has many great loves, and loves them
all deeply, if not equally.

We tend to look down on dilettantes, but they can perform a
useful service.  Sometimes, making a connection between two
ideas at the right time and in the right place can help spur
someone else to "go deep" with the idea.  Even when that
doesn't happen, dabbling can bring great personal joy and
provide more substantial entertainment than a lot of pop
culture.

Academics are among the people these days with a well-defined
social opportunity to be explore at least two areas deeply
and seriously: their chosen discipline and teaching.  This
is perhaps the most compelling reason to desire a life in
academia.  It even offers a freedom to branch out into new
areas later in one's career that is not so easily available
to people who work in industry.

These days, it's hard to be a polymath even inside one's own
discipline.  To know all sub-areas of computer science, say,
as well as the experts in those sub-areas is a daunting
challenge.  I think back to the effort my fellow students
and I put in over the years that enabled us to take the Ph.D.
qualifying exams in CS.  I did quite well across the board,
but even then I didn't understand operating systems or
programming languages as well as experts in those areas.
Many years later, despite continued reading and programming,
the gap has only grown.

I share the vague sense of loss, expressed by the author of
the article linked to above, of a time when one human could
master multiple areas of discourse and make fundamental
advances to several.  We are certainly better off for
collective understanding the world so much much better, but
the result is a blow to a certain sort of individual mind
and spirit.
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