In Defense of Polymaths

I don’t believe in overly-strict specialization. It’s too limiting. So, we push our coders to learn how to write well. We encourage our technicians to learn programming. We even bought a laser cutter to help our designers tinker. We push them out of their particular specializations to keep them learning. It’s a little uncomfortable, and sometimes t... See more

We live in an age where deep-specialization is highly encouraged — the era of what tech analyst Vinnie Mirchandani calls the “monomath.” Doctors specialize, lawyers specialize, academics specialize, mechanics specialize ... just about everyone professionally specializes. The more deeply you specialize, the more money you’re likely to make.

And that’... See more

Polymathism is largely untapped force in business practice, but it’s also the future of problem-solving.

Take the burgeoning field of biomimicry, for example. Biomimicry looks to nature for solutions to modern problems — after all, Mother Earth has had 3.8 billion years to work out all the design kinks. Biomimetics requires practitioners to be more than engineers, more than biologists, more than ecologists, more than designers, and more than inventors... See more

As technology becomes a commodity with the democratization of information, it’s the big-picture generalists who will predict, innovate, and rise to power fastest.

And in the modern workscape we desperately need people with the ability to see big picture solutions. That’s where being a polymath has certain advantages.

What’s more, in the digital age, learning has really never been easier — and not just for the “geniuses” that walk among us. Polymath status is accessible to just about anyone with a modem, a library card, and the desire to learn.

But why? What’s so wrong with trying to learn new things? Here’s what Maya Angelou — herself a polymath (poet, journalist, dancer) — has to say about the saying:“It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Angelou said to the Smithsonian. “I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and you put reasonable i... See more

If they are so foolish as to dabble instead of devoting themselves to a single calling, those unfortunates sometimes earn the time-dishonored label of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”