[HN Gopher] A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
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A Return to Polymathy (2015) [pdf]
Author : mirawelner
Score : 80 points
Date : 2025-01-04 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulrcohen.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulrcohen.github.io)
| greekanalyst wrote:
| Great piece. One of the best places cultivating this type of
| polymathy today is Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program.
| https://symsys.stanford.edu/
| EstanislaoStan wrote:
| I'll also plug St. John's College. https://www.sjc.edu
| lolcatuser wrote:
| Definitely. This, plus a graduate degree in a more specific
| field, and you end up with a very well-rounded education.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| FYI I just read some more about polymathy and had a look at
| the curricula. To me it feels really a bit too 'meta'. You
| might as well say, stay open and curious to any knowledge.
|
| That said, still I'm open and curious... could you please
| be so kind as to elaborate how that education is very well-
| rounded? What would the studies yield more concretely?
| bullshy wrote:
| you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created...
| that's the physics of this.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the
| polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self
| motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am
| not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such
| behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again,
| most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need
| encouragement at all.
| Swizec wrote:
| Almost everyone is a curious polymath until institutions
| beat it out of them. We could start simply by nourishing
| curiosity
| brm wrote:
| They don't have to actively cultivate it but they should
| remove the walls between it. There's a lot of red
| tape/administrative confusion at most schools if you want
| to do anything interdisciplinary, especially if you want to
| cross more than two disciplines. Institutions should be
| more like buffets for the polymath. If I want to interlink
| say landscape architecture, sculpture, acoustics, materials
| science and biology I shouldn't need more than one signoff
| much less the 5 it would probably take to do work in
| something like that at most universities.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| There's a difference between "Create polymaths from
| scratch" or "Create a polymath degree" (oxymoron, honestly)
| and just "Let's have a learning environment that allows
| it".
| musicale wrote:
| It does look interesting (and related to the Systems school
| proposed by TFA), though I've also heard it described as a
| watered-down or easier CS degree. (Then again, CS itself is
| sometimes criticized as a watered-down or easier engineering
| degree, or a degree in calculators.)
|
| Data Science sometimes gets a similar watered-down label, but
| it looks like Stanford's program (at least) might be somewhat
| technical and may incorporate scientific computation, as well
| as statistical applications.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| For those without means understanding is a luxury, for many with,
| it is merely aesthetic. Matching drive with opportunity could
| unlock humanistic discovery but it is far more likely to be done
| artificially given the way we organize our societies.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _For those without means understanding is a luxury_
|
| Saying that those without wealth are barred from genuine
| understanding reduces learning to a matter of money. Plenty of
| us with limited resources develop deep insights by way of
| libraries, conversations, online education, or other active
| seeking in the margins of what time and means permit.
|
| That proposition also throws away personal agency by framing
| understanding as something that happens only if external
| conditions allow it, rather than admitting each person's power
| to seek knowledge and push beyond circumstance.
|
| Your second sentence feels more balanced, setting up a good
| question: how do we bootstrap Gene Roddenberry's future fairly
| while still recognizing personal drive, differences, and merit?
| Cringehipster wrote:
| Polymathy or Jack of all trades mentality is the new self-help.
| Ever since I started this journey in 2022, I've become a better
| writer, more fit, and motivated overall.
|
| I recommend building your polymathy journey like RPG stats. Your
| five stats are: Strength, Intellect, Creativity, Spritituality,
| and Charisma. Then you tie your hobbies together with these
| stats. If you feel like one of your stats is low, then you
| practice it.
|
| Reading Range and Thinking Like Leonardo Da Vinci will also teach
| you to think like a multidisciplinary thinker. The hardest part
| of this path is balancing your time, but the trade off is
| amazing. Even though I'm not a super-genius, I feel like I can do
| anything I put my mind on.
| drekipus wrote:
| [delayed]
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| ... would be good. But it's been a decade and I think we're
| further from a society of polymaths now than we were then.
|
| I'm lucky enough to have been able to afford a constant trickle
| of college classes for the last 20 years. It's awesome. I get so
| much more out of it than my younger full-time classmates are. But
| it requires a lot of sacrifice. I probably wouldn't be on this
| path if I had had kids, for instance.
|
| So as nice as it feels to get excited about polymathy, I'd rather
| we take steps to make it normal.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I think there may always be too much socioeconomic pressure
| against it in modern industrial society for it to become
| normalized.
| demaga wrote:
| I've been on the fence about generalists vs specialists debate
| for a while now. Although people love to bring up examples of
| outstanding geniuses like da Vinci, it seems society as a whole
| moves towards specialists.
|
| Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better.
| So I'm not so sure how useful are these efforts to educate new
| generations of polymaths.
| alganet wrote:
| The text seems to put effort into differentiating between what
| a generalist is and what a polymath is:
|
| > Polymaths don't simply know a lot, they understand what
| fields have in common.
|
| According to the text, the polymath focuses on the intersection
| of fields. This is more specific than a generalist, that could
| know a lot of fields but have no particular experience in what
| is their connection.
|
| I don't know if I agree with the text definition of what a
| polymath is. It is, however, what they meant.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Hard to publish interdisciplinary stuff in scientific journals
| when it's usually shot down by disciplinary specialists who
| don't get it
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Lots of crap too as well as stuff that is hard to
| characterize.
|
| I like this guy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou
|
| who basically plays the same game as Derrida. Except Derrida
| plays it very sloppily even if you might blame yourself for
| not understanding it because he is analyzing a difficult text
| in German in French and now you're reading a bad translation
| in English.
|
| Badiou on the other hand will mash up Marxism with difficult
| problems in math such as the Continuum Hypothesis. Unlike
| Derrida there's no doubt that he _really_ understands the
| math and he did the hard work with the precision of
| continental analytic philosophy. He irritates many of the
| people who are irritated by Derrida for the same reasons
| except at the level of details Badiou is impeccable which
| would all the more infuriating if somebody tries to engage
| with it in order to refute it.
|
| (Funny I found Badiou's concept of singulation to be very
| relevant to ontology in computing, particularly the
| distinction between individuals
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language))
| and categories
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language) in
| Wikipedia, particularly given that something can be an
| individual and a category at the same time... Which twists
| systems like OWL into knots.)
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| "Badiou has been involved in a number of political
| organisations, and regularly comments on political events.
| Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political
| force."
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better.
|
| This is a bold claim, any proof for this?
| alganet wrote:
| > If one is looking for a single label to encompass many of the
| new foundations - perhaps to form a new school or department - I
| would suggest Systems.
|
| What about good old philosophy?
|
| Philosophy already has a long tradition of birthing new sciences,
| a long tradition of encouraging polymath thinking and a long
| tradition of estabilishing foundational ways of thinking.
| transitorykris wrote:
| Philosophy degrees can be designed in this way. Various
| "philosophy of X" courses to explore. Logic and theory of
| computation are typically found here.
| analog31 wrote:
| Physics is like this too. An odd thing about physics is that it
| doesn't have very many of its own techniques or tools, so we
| have to go outside of our field if we want to solve any
| nontrivial problem -- theoretical or experimental. For instance
| I didn't take any electronics or programming classes beyond
| "101" level, but have ended up using both extensively in my
| later work.
|
| At my present workplace, I've noticed that the people who have
| polymath tendencies tend to have physical science degrees.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If you find this interesting, you might enjoy this old interview
| with the founder of the CLT, a competitor to the SAT that's
| intended to create incentives for schools to teach a more
| classical curriculum:
| https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/philosophy-of/educating...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm both hopeful and skeptical about that kind of thing.
|
| On one hand I think one of the smartest things you can do is
| look at things from the widest perspective in time and space (I
| told somebody once that "I'd like to be somebody that someone
| from 3000 years ago could understand")
|
| On the other hand many of those programs are pushed by people
| who are closed minded.
|
| When it comes to philosophy the likes of Plato, Aristotle and
| Socrates can still come across as really fresh. As much as you
| might hear about Euclid's _Elements_ if you self-study math, I
| think _Elements_ is a complete waste of time in 2024.
|
| I made a journey from being an anime fan to a sinophile and
| lately I've been meditating on how the Asian collection at my
| Uni is one of the largest in the US but is dwarfed by the
| National Library of China. Important works are not in
| translation or the translations are poor. Books on Chinese
| mythology in English don't even agree on who the important
| figures are, it's like you get one book on the Greek myths that
| never mentions Hercules and another that mentions Apollo.
|
| The more I learn about the sinosphere the more I realize just
| how ignorant I am. Western "Great Books" are great don't get me
| wrong but they only tell you part of the story.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| One of the best things going at my Uni (Cornell) in my mind is
| not that they have a data science major [1] but that they have a
| data science minor that goes with anything from literature to
| biology [2].
|
| [1] not sure I, as an applications programmer, want to hire that
| person because they're too focused on writing the April 2024
| sales report and not on developing the process to make the
| monthly sales report.
|
| [2] (talk about putting your skills and knowledge on wheels!
| nixonaddiction wrote:
| just sounds like teaching more students philosophy, but now the
| dominant philosophy is systems theory. which i super agree with.
| systems are relevant everywhere from literature to engineering. i
| agree with everyone else who has said true polymathy can't be
| taught.
| openrisk wrote:
| > Those colleges and universities that figure out how to organize
| research and teach new foundations and polymathy and prepare
| their students to understand a world in which every system, at
| every scale, acts causally on others, will see their stock rise.
| The rest will struggle to remain relevant.
|
| It is safe to say that this prediction did not come to pass. The
| system (pun) keeps churning idiot-savants, well-trained cogs in
| the giant machine that society had been reduced to.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Universities have an opportunity and an obligation to train
| polymaths. The opportunity comes from the emergence of new
| foundations that unify fields. The obligation arises because
| humanity's pressing problems are not neatly confined within
| academic disciplines. However, the divisive organizations of
| academic departments and curricula make it hard for faculty and
| students to understand systemic problems such as climate change,
| biological diversity, sustainability, and poverty. Universities
| might be judged harshly in future for promoting specialization
| and a cult of expertise when they could have been training new
| generations of scholars to understand systems as systems.
|
| I absolutely love the general idea the essay promotes - it is
| completely in line with my opinions in what academia _should be_.
|
| Unfortunately, the author chooses to ignore the elephant in the
| room: who is going to pay for it? Students are already saddling
| themselves with six figures of debt in the US, in Germany it's at
| least tens of thousands of euros to cover costs of living, and
| that doesn't allow for "unproductivity" aka learning stuff not
| relevant to one's degree that isn't mandatory - and even worse,
| at least in Germany you _have to_ finish your degree in a
| specified time or you 'll get forcibly kicked out. Society
| doesn't give a fuck either, education budgets have been slashed
| for decades now, partially causing the debt issue in the US as
| well as the very rigorous rules in Europe. And that's noticeable
| in all the "liberal arts" and other non-STEM degree programs as
| well - a degree in these courses doesn't result in high-paying
| jobs, which means they're mostly rich/affluent kids that can
| afford it, and some of them like Slavic studies have barely any
| students left at all (which explains both the quality of online
| discussions regarding anything Eastern European and the quality
| of Western politics regarding these countries - the reactions to
| the Russian invasion were so shameful because there were barely
| any qualified experts to guide politicians!).
|
| And to make it worse than it already is, there is a second _even
| larger_ elephant in the room: the purpose of academia has been
| completely perverted over the last decades, ever since the "push
| for education". Many universities these days are effectively
| reduced to being degree mills. Employers don't care about
| degrees, they care about universities weeding out undesirable
| employee candidates (the poor, the disabled, students with mental
| health issues etc pp - there's been many studies done on social
| strata and academic achievements) so they don't violate anti-
| discrimination laws or risk "duds".
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