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I read Goethe's 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' recently, and researched a bit about his (somewhat controversial) scientific contributions on the side. It lead me to think about polymathy in general, the ideal of the individual whom had mastered many fields, and how that might appear in the modern day.
Goethe was born less than a century after the Scientific Revolution, only shortly after the separation of science from religion. Science as a field was known then as 'scientific philosophy,' and it goes without saying that you would be required to know a lot less at that time to be considered an expert in a field, compared to the modern day... because there just wasn't a lot to know! All the knowledge we take for granted nowadays, (periodic table, theory of evolution, etc.) and teach to middle schoolers as standard knowledge hadn't been discovered at that time. Goethe studied humanities, specifically law-- but he also kept an interest in politics as well as natural sciences, and made his own contribution to the fields of botany, anatomy, geology and such. However, his fame lies in his writing, not his scientific contributions; with his work 'Faust' being commonly considered Germany's greatest contribution to world literature.
We arrive at my question; what of modern polymathy? Science (as the workings of the world) used to be broad and dominated by guesswork, and before the year 1600 European "science" loyally followed the works of Greek and Roman authors and more closely resembled practices such as astrology and alchemy. Closing in on the 19th and 20th centuries, and now the modern day, advancement in the sciences has accelerated faster than ever-- the field of science, broadly speaking, has branched off and specialized into so many highly-specific fields of study that no human mind is capable of 'mastering' them all. Asimov described science like a giant orchard, of which the average scientist was confined to crawling over half an acre. Going with this train of thought, the idea of someone making significant contributions to scientific thought or research without studying within the field full time, much less dedicating his life to it... is downright laughable. So comes the death of the "renaissance man."
Despite all that, I still have an unfortunate attachment to the idea of polymathy. That's why trying to decide what field I want to study feels almost downright oppressive to me. A few weeks ago I wrote a bit about my academic and personal interests to this education consulting team, and they drafted up an overview of what they think I'd be best suited to study. They landed on political science for me, telling me I'd do well in foreign policy, geopolitics and such. Their assessment does seem somewhat accurate, but somehow the idea of analyzing constitution and political thought for the rest of my life puts a pit in my stomach. Disregarding everything else, I just can't see myself working within one field of study forever. I want to learn intensively about every field. Why political science? Why not linguistics? Or biochemistry? Or history! Or astrophysics. Or...
You get the point. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'll never get to be everything I want, or know everything I'm curious about. I'm sure that, like everyone else, I'll end up finding one field to specialize in and leaving everything else for leisure.
Goethe was born less than a century after the Scientific Revolution, only shortly after the separation of science from religion. Science as a field was known then as 'scientific philosophy,' and it goes without saying that you would be required to know a lot less at that time to be considered an expert in a field, compared to the modern day... because there just wasn't a lot to know! All the knowledge we take for granted nowadays, (periodic table, theory of evolution, etc.) and teach to middle schoolers as standard knowledge hadn't been discovered at that time. Goethe studied humanities, specifically law-- but he also kept an interest in politics as well as natural sciences, and made his own contribution to the fields of botany, anatomy, geology and such. However, his fame lies in his writing, not his scientific contributions; with his work 'Faust' being commonly considered Germany's greatest contribution to world literature.
We arrive at my question; what of modern polymathy? Science (as the workings of the world) used to be broad and dominated by guesswork, and before the year 1600 European "science" loyally followed the works of Greek and Roman authors and more closely resembled practices such as astrology and alchemy. Closing in on the 19th and 20th centuries, and now the modern day, advancement in the sciences has accelerated faster than ever-- the field of science, broadly speaking, has branched off and specialized into so many highly-specific fields of study that no human mind is capable of 'mastering' them all. Asimov described science like a giant orchard, of which the average scientist was confined to crawling over half an acre. Going with this train of thought, the idea of someone making significant contributions to scientific thought or research without studying within the field full time, much less dedicating his life to it... is downright laughable. So comes the death of the "renaissance man."
Despite all that, I still have an unfortunate attachment to the idea of polymathy. That's why trying to decide what field I want to study feels almost downright oppressive to me. A few weeks ago I wrote a bit about my academic and personal interests to this education consulting team, and they drafted up an overview of what they think I'd be best suited to study. They landed on political science for me, telling me I'd do well in foreign policy, geopolitics and such. Their assessment does seem somewhat accurate, but somehow the idea of analyzing constitution and political thought for the rest of my life puts a pit in my stomach. Disregarding everything else, I just can't see myself working within one field of study forever. I want to learn intensively about every field. Why political science? Why not linguistics? Or biochemistry? Or history! Or astrophysics. Or...
You get the point. I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I'll never get to be everything I want, or know everything I'm curious about. I'm sure that, like everyone else, I'll end up finding one field to specialize in and leaving everything else for leisure.
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