< The forgotten path of polymathy

~abacushex

May you be successful indeed, and anyone else who can see and relate to what you've described. I work in information technology, but at my current (and longest ever) employment I have been on three different teams, and aiming to move to a fourth. Even just within "I.T." there is so much variety one can pursue. Yet I know database guys who have no interest in server infrastructure. Storage and backup guys who have no interest in networks.

Of course, I see that you are casting a wider net than varieties within a field; areas of interest that are not related at all. My best friend, at the same employer and in the same division, goes home and paints, and draws, and reads voraciously. He's a better example of that. I'm not to his level at all in terms of artistic expertise but I share some overlap in that I have an obsession with graphic design, and can easily get sucked into the nearest art supply store looking for stencils and fineliner markers.

One thing we both wonder about, and I think it is directly related to what you're saying, is how many of our colleagues seem to lack a rich "inner life" beyond the cheap entertainment of mainstream Hollywood and football on weekends. This may not be true of them, but after working with people for years they will eventually reveal themselves to you, as we all do. They seem to lack curiosity.

Polymathy is curiosity put to work, in my view. The devaluing of a strong liberal arts foundation, especially for highly technical fields, is partially why we are to this point. Liberal arts being at bottom, a grounding in Enlightenment and Renaissance thinking. The ones who paved that path before us are the ones who laid the groundwork for these highly specialized fields to exist in the first place. It's a shame if the edifice upon which this is all built is forgotten. We need Bertrand Russell, as a prime example polymath, not to be the last Bertrand Russell. Take out the inspiration, philosophy and music of it all, and you merely produce more skilled technicians.

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