That said, still I'm open and curious... could you please be so kind as to elaborate how that education is very well-rounded? What would the studies yield more concretely?
I was able to complete degrees in COLA and a CONS simultaneously in four years with one of those four years being study abroad studying one subject to the exclusion of everything else because of it. When I graduated, I had studied two foreign languages and taken elective/upper div courses in poetry, immigration policy, ethics, mathematics, and computer science.
Unless things have drastically changed since I graduated, it still holds true for UT in particular, and is one reason I consider my education to have been so great.
I think the best outcome is to have such students crush their standardized tests by outperforming them due to having a higher baseline because of the interdisciplinary program's curriculum.
Even just putting together people from different background and trajectories can do miracles sometimes.
Data Science sometimes gets a similar watered-down label, but it looks like Stanford's program (at least) might be somewhat technical and may incorporate scientific computation, as well as statistical applications.
Saying that those without wealth are barred from genuine understanding reduces learning to a matter of money. Plenty of us with limited resources develop deep insights by way of libraries, conversations, online education, or other active seeking in the margins of what time and means permit.
That proposition also throws away personal agency by framing understanding as something that happens only if external conditions allow it, rather than admitting each person’s power to seek knowledge and push beyond circumstance.
Your second sentence feels more balanced, setting up a good question: how do we bootstrap Gene Roddenberry’s future fairly while still recognizing personal drive, differences, and merit?
I recommend building your polymathy journey like RPG stats. Your five stats are: Strength, Intellect, Creativity, Spritituality, and Charisma. Then you tie your hobbies together with these stats. If you feel like one of your stats is low, then you practice it.
Reading Range and Thinking Like Leonardo Da Vinci will also teach you to think like a multidisciplinary thinker. The hardest part of this path is balancing your time, but the trade off is amazing. Even though I'm not a super-genius, I feel like I can do anything I put my mind on.
I got into self-help and polymathy at a younger age and it quite literally pulled me out of poverty because I believed that I could.
Now that I'm older, I realise and understand that I'm actually not the best at everything, but I can do a little bit of everything to a sound standard, and that most other people can once they give it a little try and work through the beginner mistakes.
Some people have a real geniune fear of either: 1. Mistakes and being wrong, or 2. Learning, and having to understand something that is different to what they know currently.
I deal with people in camps 1 & 2 every day, so I'd love to find a way to help them overcome both.
Camp 2 is interesting. I've met people who didn't know the value of learning. Learning prevents mental disease. Yet not many people go home to learn something new, even when it's proven to help you in all areas of life. Hopefully, you find the answer for this.
I'm lucky enough to have been able to afford a constant trickle of college classes for the last 20 years. It's awesome. I get so much more out of it than my younger full-time classmates are. But it requires a lot of sacrifice. I probably wouldn't be on this path if I had had kids, for instance.
So as nice as it feels to get excited about polymathy, I'd rather we take steps to make it normal.
As technology gets better at eliminating jobs, we may see a socioeconomic pressure towards remaining pivot-ready by constantly broadening one's capabilities... A world where as soon as you have a job you start training for your next one on the side because they just don't last that long. Making such a lifestyle broadly accessible would mean some significant changes from where we are now, but in the long run paying for all that school and tolerating all that time-off to attend it might end up being cheaper than the cost of the unrest associated with resisting change.
If this isn't already a line out of a dystopic speculative fiction short story someone should crib it for that purpose.
It sounds outlandish but I think the path away from scarcity based economics must eventually traverse a zone where the only scarcity-driven careers left aren't substantial enough to commit a lifetime to, so being dual- or triple-specialized will be a necessity.
And as much of a hassle that may be, letting scarcity continue to drive despite its inability to avoid hazards seems much worse.
Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better. So I'm not so sure how useful are these efforts to educate new generations of polymaths.
> Polymaths don’t simply know a lot, they understand what fields have in common.
According to the text, the polymath focuses on the intersection of fields. This is more specific than a generalist, that could know a lot of fields but have no particular experience in what is their connection.
I don't know if I agree with the text definition of what a polymath is. It is, however, what they meant.
I like this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou
who basically plays the same game as Derrida. Except Derrida plays it very sloppily even if you might blame yourself for not understanding it because he is analyzing a difficult text in German in French and now you're reading a bad translation in English.
Badiou on the other hand will mash up Marxism with difficult problems in math such as the Continuum Hypothesis. Unlike Derrida there's no doubt that he really understands the math and he did the hard work with the precision of continental analytic philosophy. He irritates many of the people who are irritated by Derrida for the same reasons except at the level of details Badiou is impeccable which would all the more infuriating if somebody tries to engage with it in order to refute it.
(Funny I found Badiou's concept of singulation to be very relevant to ontology in computing, particularly the distinction between individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)) and categories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language) in Wikipedia, particularly given that something can be an individual and a category at the same time... Which twists systems like OWL into knots.)
Academically, Marx was ahead of his time even if his prophecy that capitalism would be smashed by "the tendency for the rate of profit to decline" and the labor theory of value turned out to be bunk. He was popular in the 20th centuries and even David Bell chair of the social sciences department of Harvard and as ardent a supporter of the status quo as there ever was claimed to be Marxist. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism [3] https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20...
What about good old philosophy?
Philosophy already has a long tradition of birthing new sciences, a long tradition of encouraging polymath thinking and a long tradition of estabilishing foundational ways of thinking.
At my present workplace, I've noticed that the people who have polymath tendencies tend to have physical science degrees.
EDIT: Most noticeably from the absolute garbage code I had to make work that these 'genius coders' produced. They were good at physics, but they should never have written any code if it could have been prevented.
EDIT#2: And an adjacent poster "FredPret" demonstrated it perfectly. Let's derive Evolution from particle physics... and go! (Sean Carroll is a good antidote to this attitude... he knows there are levels of description that are useful.)
It's interesting the converse is true: techbros often think they would've excelled in physics PhD programs
(Self-referentially: Even for me... So take what I said above with a grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure this has solid research behind it.)
Garbage code isn't exclusive to physicists. The coders often complain when they have to deal with code from other coders.
And physicists gonna code. The last nontrivial problem to be solved without computation was probably solved sometime in the 1930s. And the most powerful "physics software" is a coding stack.
In my own case I've made a career long effort to learn good coding practices, but I don't expect my code to go straight into production.
As for deriving evolution from particle physics, I don't think I've known a physicist who would recommend that.
The thing is, the limitations of our tools don't excuse us from having to do research and make things work. Or from finding employment. ;-) So we tend to be opportunists in terms of synthesizing knowledge from multiple fields.
Somehow, this was extended to computers too. The three of them are now cross-pollinating. It happens with other sciences too, but it seems it started earlier in physics and math.
In that sense, anyone with knowledge consisting of "a little bit of computer science plus one single other trade" likely represents the new baseline, not polymathy (similar to the previuous one "a little bit of math plus one single other trade").
So, if you want to be a CS polymath, you'd have to know what CS will look like when all this cross pollination settles down. I think it will look very different from what it is now, it is such a new science. Impactful, but very new.
Even biology had this cross-pollination thing. Lots of fields took evolution ideas, some in very dangerous ways. This influence survives to this day (neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, etc), but it is more like a cargo cult than real intersection. It resembles more biology from the past than what biologists think today.
Polymaths right now are probably working in the fields with less computers, trying to fill that gap. In the cross-pollination analogy, they're the first to waggle dance.
In that sense, I see a history+biology polymath more rare and special than a cs+math polymath, for example. They probably have a more unique and singular perspective on science than the more estabilished swarm of existing cs+math polymaths.
As I mentioned in another post. physics ran out of problems that were solvable by hand with equations roughly a century ago. Feynman managed rooms full of "computers" who were people operating mechanical calculating machines for nuclear physics problems. When digital computers gradually became available, physicists were already waiting in line to use them. Von Neumann promoted government funding of academic computing facilities with an eye towards using the computers for bomb yield calculations.
The software industry gradually began to emerge roughly a decade later.
Ironically, I was "a little math plus some other trade." I learned programming in high school (1981) but had a summer internship at a computing facility and it didn't spark my interest in programming as an occupation, so I majored in math. My other intended trade -- being a rock star -- never materialized, and I ended up with a second major in physics instead. But I've always been an avid programmer, and I do most of my computational and experimental work by coding. All of my fellow physics grad students were coders, and many went into programming when their luck ran out in the grim physics job market.
Historically, yes, but what about in recent years? I know there have been some new fields that arose out of philosophy, but this seems to have slowed down.
On one hand I think one of the smartest things you can do is look at things from the widest perspective in time and space (I told somebody once that "I'd like to be somebody that someone from 3000 years ago could understand")
On the other hand many of those programs are pushed by people who are closed minded.
When it comes to philosophy the likes of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates can still come across as really fresh. As much as you might hear about Euclid's Elements if you self-study math, I think Elements is a complete waste of time in 2024.
I made a journey from being an anime fan to a sinophile and lately I've been meditating on how the Asian collection at my Uni is one of the largest in the US but is dwarfed by the National Library of China. Important works are not in translation or the translations are poor. Books on Chinese mythology in English don't even agree on who the important figures are, it's like you get one book on the Greek myths that never mentions Hercules and another that mentions Apollo.
The more I learn about the sinosphere the more I realize just how ignorant I am. Western "Great Books" are great don't get me wrong but they only tell you part of the story.
[1] not sure I, as an applications programmer, want to hire that person because they're too focused on writing the April 2024 sales report and not on developing the process to make the monthly sales report.
[2] (talk about putting your skills and knowledge on wheels!
It is safe to say that this prediction did not come to pass. The system (pun) keeps churning idiot-savants, well-trained cogs in the giant machine that society had been reduced to.
The only way this works if it skips the assembly line right down to being of value to society, ie you set up a system which explicitly transforms that teaching into things like startups, research, nonprofits etc.
I absolutely love the general idea the essay promotes - it is completely in line with my opinions in what academia should be.
Unfortunately, the author chooses to ignore the elephant in the room: who is going to pay for it? Students are already saddling themselves with six figures of debt in the US, in Germany it's at least tens of thousands of euros to cover costs of living, and that doesn't allow for "unproductivity" aka learning stuff not relevant to one's degree that isn't mandatory - and even worse, at least in Germany you have to finish your degree in a specified time or you'll get forcibly kicked out. Society doesn't give a fuck either, education budgets have been slashed for decades now, partially causing the debt issue in the US as well as the very rigorous rules in Europe. And that's noticeable in all the "liberal arts" and other non-STEM degree programs as well - a degree in these courses doesn't result in high-paying jobs, which means they're mostly rich/affluent kids that can afford it, and some of them like Slavic studies have barely any students left at all (which explains both the quality of online discussions regarding anything Eastern European and the quality of Western politics regarding these countries - the reactions to the Russian invasion were so shameful because there were barely any qualified experts to guide politicians!).
And to make it worse than it already is, there is a second even larger elephant in the room: the purpose of academia has been completely perverted over the last decades, ever since the "push for education". Many universities these days are effectively reduced to being degree mills. Employers don't care about degrees, they care about universities weeding out undesirable employee candidates (the poor, the disabled, students with mental health issues etc pp - there's been many studies done on social strata and academic achievements) so they don't violate anti-discrimination laws or risk "duds". Capitalism has perverted and weaponized academia.
(I could go off on a tangentially related issue - who is funding academia in the first place, "chasing grants" taking away research and education time, Germany and its infamous job insecurity for anyone employed in academia and not on a tenure/professorship track, but the comment is long and rant-y enough as it is...)
They could have at least mentioned it! Complaining that academia doesn't do what the author wants is one thing and completely justified - I think we both agree that the situation of modern academia is a disgrace - but to not even mention the two biggest drivers behind the situation once is ... sad.
> It seems like excuses are constantly made for those responsible for education's conversion into a means of resupply for employers
Oh I'm not excusing that. I'm accusing, both employers for demanding their prospective employees go through many years of training that they won't ever need and saddling themselves with debt for it (we used to label jobs requiring one to pay for training as scams, 'member?), and society itself for not pushing back on this crap. But in order to credibly accuse someone, one first has to name the goddamn thing and state that there are two giant elephants in the china shop that is our modern society.
Tech companies consider their brain trusts like they consider their machines - a conglomeration of specialized systems with specific tasks and roles. They want us all to be square pegs that fit into their square holes. I find myself frustrated with this method of work, especially when mentors and managers suggest that we all should give in to this specialist mindset and train up in one specific area, to the detriment of other fields.
The world is endlessly fascinating and I want to learn about it all. I want to live in different places, learn different skills, have different chapters in my life with different focuses. I can't bear the thought that 10 years from now, my mind might be exactly the same as it is today, with no growth and no difference in thinking. I think a great way to avoid that stagnation is to think different thoughts, to change one's mind frequently, and to not get sucked into shortcuts for thinking.
One common shortcut prevalent in Western society currently is that profitability is a direct proxy for value, and that we must constantly maximize value/profitability. "Hustle culture" is a great example of this - is there something you enjoy in your life? Monetize it! Don't consider the fact that the pursuit of money might actually destroy your love of the hobby. It's happened to me before, and I'm very cautious now of letting this exchange of joy for money happen to my other hobbies as well.
- The Polymath by Waqas Ahmed. This one directly discusses polymathy in history, and how our "natural state" really is of that of the polymath, not the specialist. A nice book that helped me get past some mental blocks and really embrace learning whatever it is I'm interested in, without reservations on what others may think about such "distractions".
- The Creative Way by Rick Rubin. This masterpiece is written by a legendary musical producer who has probably worked with one of your favorite Western musicians at some point. His Zen-inspired approach to creativity and acceptance of ideas, wherever they may come from, is an essential tool in any polymath's toolbox.
- How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson. I really enjoyed learning how the world-changing inventions that we take for granted were often invented by creatively gluing together wildly divergent ideas, to ultimately make something that appears deceptively simple.
The key takeaway for me is that anyone and everyone can be a polymath, with the correct attitude. Learning is not a skill reserved only for the most intelligent and capable - everyone is capable of learning anything they want. Some people may be more naturally skilled, but that doesn't preclude the rest of us from participating.
Agree with everything; Indeed "polymathy" is our natural state because we are always thinking/playing with different concepts and their interrelationships. It is highly frustrating when i see folks saying things like they "can't learn/understand/grok something" and treating it as some sort of an intrinsic limitation whereas the reality is that all people have the potential and if they really applied themselves will be far better than most folks. Skim/Browse/Read books/articles/watch videos on any and every topic that takes your fancy, think over connecting the dots, debate/discuss/argue to strengthen understanding and always keep switching between "the forest"(i.e. the holistic big picture) and "the trees"(i.e. the individual specialties). This is true Education and should be approached with full enthusiasm and distinct from Schooling/Job needs.
This is true Education and should be approached with full enthusiasm and distinct from Schooling/Job needs.
if you want to be an athlete, start with an athletic attitude. if you want to be a genius, start with a genius attitude and ask what the most brilliant person you can think of would do, then find out. if you want to be a mathematician, start with a mathematical inclination, etc. it's the only way to get there.
Be interested enough in many things and spend 5+ cumulative years working on each of those things.