Renaissance is no more

A polymath (Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, "having learned much") is a person with encyclopedic, broad, or varied knowledge or learning.The term is used rarely enough to be included in dictionaries of obscure words. Renaissance Man and Homo Universalis are related terms to describe a person who is well educated, or who excels, in a wide variety of subjects or fields

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, oh... about a thousand, a smart ambitious and hard learning man could study and know everything of importance that there was to know. Such a  person would gather many students around him, earn adulation and respect... and make a comfortable living. Even a hundred years ago, one could gain by knowing a lot about many things. A hundred years ago, there would be respect, perhaps a few students but no adulation and probably no money.

Now, the intellectual standard is to know a lot about increasingly narrowing slices of human endeavor. The way to accomplish something and to gain respect is to spend inordinate amount of intellectual sweat, blood and tears on one problem within a narrow field. This is what they write upon tombstones or in professional biographies. Here lies a man who enhanced our understanding of viral parthenogenesis, or identified a new chemical compound that contributed immensely to the practice of forestry, or wrote a book on the laws of haircutting. Polymaths in our world are...well, plain strange.

To aspire to synthesize,  to bring together diverse knowledge, to encounter the world of the mind, body and spirit in its frontal stillness is to go against the grain. It is the true "last frontier" of the modern hero. The romantic idea of heroism is fighting against assured tragedy, against odds. To struggle without recompense, to futilely aspire  to encompass the immensity of human knowledge, to study languages that you do not need, to be lit up, excited and moved by ideas that don't make money- this is the true heroism of the modern age.

Polymaths - I am with you.

Comments

['shir]

here we are in a new age!!!!!
two of the attributes of the greek hero Ulisse in Omero's Iliade are "polimethis" and "politrophos", in two words: a man able tu assume many forms and change its behaviour so fast as circumstance may request.
This kind of intelligence (or thrikstery) could certainly reflect the supercial and approssimative approach than you describe.
Maybe one of the most dangerous aspects in contemporary living, as thousand years ago, could be the presunction to know (in first instance) about ourselves and the others, and to teach too the way of possible solution/escape in order to gain a better social position.
I think the major problem now, is than our contempoary life is passing throug the illusion of freedom (freedom as a measure of our capacity to buy and consume every kind of goods)....'cos this is the ethic Here and Now.
We are not free, we cannot decide, but we can be a little more responsable in the common interest of umanity as "the big community of adam".....and certainly is important to fight this (intellectual?) tendence to "nichilims of the appearances".

shalom