The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility

Jan Smuts, who in his book Holism and Evolution (1927) called for the unity of all things and knowledge. It alludes to what scientists, artists and philosophers have long considered to be a ‘vanishing point’ – a geometric notion with philosophical implications, where all of our particular areas of enquiry, knowledge and understanding eventually con

Throughout his life, Leon Battista Alberti was concerned with becoming his optimal self. Known to us primarily as the fifteenth century humanist philosopher, Alberti’s De iciarchia (‘On the Man of Excellence and Ruler of His Family’) became a central text in defining the bourgeoning worldview of the courtier polymath. His famous declaration ‘a man

British educationalist Ken Robinson insists that the focus of an individual should be on those areas where talent or capacity meets passion or desire; it is at this intersection, as proven time and time again, where success brews. Those who discover this talent – passion connection in multiple fields ought to pursue them all. While Nathan Myhrvold

David E. Cooper highlights as the ‘syncretic’ attitude: the belief that ‘the way to truth is to gather together many, many perspectives, from which will emerge a common core, which is where “truth” lies’.

Michel de Montagne said, ‘the only learning I look for is that which tells me how to know myself, and teaches me how to die well and to live well’.

The notion of ‘Western civilisation’ – as the inheritor of Greek thought, Roman law and Anglo-Saxon adventurism – was propagated as the ‘central force for progress’ following the Renaissance and then taught and studied by the elite in Europe as ‘the classics’ since the Enlightenment. All other (often grander) civilisations such as the Indian, Islam

Polymaths like Alberti constantly strove to attain their optimal state of being. Optimality is the fullest realisation of one's potential; it is different from pursuing an illusory ‘perfection’. Maslow said that ‘what a man can be, he must be’ and that one only attains a state of self-actualisation when ‘one becomes everything that one is capable o

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

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