Sublime

Around the world, whether in the form of the Persian hakeem, West African griots, the Chinese junzi, or the Mayan itz'at, the tradition of the multipurpose, polymathic courtier existed in most eras of premodern history.

In Ancient Greece, for example, there existed polymathic philosophers, freethinking enquirers who transcended fields and disciplines. They would pursue a question, and would be willing to explore any field of knowledge that might shed light on it. They were known as atopos or ‘unclassifiable’. It is they – the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

After all, what value will we, as inadequately trained mechanistic specialists, have in a world of superintelligent machines that can easily out-specialise us? How will our conditioned, one-dimensional mind be capable of comprehending the complexity of twenty-first-century challenges? How can we emancipate ourselves from the multitude of