updated 6h ago
The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility
‘There is a serious snag in the specialist way of life’, Desmond Morris said in his bestseller, The Naked Ape, which compares human and animal behaviour. ‘Everything is fine as long as the special survival device works, but if the environment undergoes a major change the specialist is left stranded’. So, for example, the koala subsists almost entir
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Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
According to a recent survey in the UK, only 20% of people are happy at work (Roth and Harter, 2010), a figure that has fallen dramatically from 60% in 1987.
from The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility by Waqas Ahmed
Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
The apparent futility of the situation led many intellectuals to claim a niche area which they felt was the only way in which they could develop a sense of…
Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.from The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility by Waqas Ahmed
Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
Such microfocus is the work of mainly the left hemisphere of the brain, responsible for linear, reductive thinking (vis-à-vis the right, which is responsible for intuitive, creative and holistic thinking). Social systems that encourage left-brain thinking therefore develop a culture of reductive, narrow-focused specialisation. According to psychiat
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Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
Various tasks – manufacturing tools, processing food and so on – which become mutually beneficial are therefore split between a population in a way that segments society according to function. This causes interdependence and therefore social cohesion. It is this necessary segmentation of society – a kind of functionalism – that created a tendency t
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Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
perceived the vastness of knowledge to be unmanageable as a whole. So a highly critical, reductionist approach to learning, pioneered by French philosopher Rene Descartes, steered the trend towards intellectual specialisation,…
Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.from The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility by Waqas Ahmed
Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
(Universal knowledge is no longer within the…
Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.from The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility by Waqas Ahmed
Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
Stephen Wolfram, polymath and founder of Mathematica, says, ‘you need a reason to learn about something’.
from The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility by Waqas Ahmed
Salman Ansari added 2mo ago
Polymaths have always minimised their reliance on standard education systems for practical and intellectual knowledge. They have come in the form of freethinkers or ‘freedoers’. In fact, polymath and educationalist Hamlet Isakhanli highlighted ‘self-education, the lifelong desire to learn, a strong will and endurance’ as being the most important st
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Blas Moros added 3h ago