How often have you seen someone describe themselves as a “polymath” on Medium? By all accounts a true polymath is extremely rare. We are talking about small fractions of a percent of the global population rare. Another key thing about polymaths is that they are identified as such by others. It is not a label someone gives themselves, except as proof of the label’s invalidity.
Let’s look at some examples of what makes a polymath:
- They are overwhelmingly self-taught as opposed to formally educated on a variety of topics
- They usually accomplish point #1 by being autodidactic
- Extremely self-confident
- Ravenous readers
- High levels of natural curiosity
- Highly open-minded. The last thing a polymath will do is block interactions with you over differing ideas.
- Highly active in doing things. This means accomplishing tangible things, not writing about ideas. They may write about what they create, but the writing is secondary to the work being written about.
- When they undertake their varied endeavors, they tend to be highly successful to the level of being leaders in that field and generally recognized as such by their peers.
If anything, being a polymath is increasingly rare. As fields of knowledge grow constantly, the ability to truly master the knowledge of multiple areas to a level required to bring those disparate fields together in order to solve a problem, or create a new idea is increasingly hard to do. A century ago there were several hundred scientific papers published each year, today there are little under 2 million per year.
These criteria narrow down the list of potential polymaths to maybe a few dozen people in the world at any given time. The odds that almost all of them are writing on Medium seem pretty remote. The odds that they are all writing on Medium, and that many don’t know how to use spell or grammar check is even lower.
Even commonly held examples are questionable. Bill Gates as a polymath? He was highly successful heading Microsoft. Since then it is more a rich man dabbling in things until losing interest when they fail. The damage The Gates Foundation did to school districts through dubious financial advice and manipulation to adopt ill-conceived policies lingers on years after he apparently lost interest in education, and wandered off to something else. The multiple and varied endeavors are there, but the record of mastering them has stopped with software. Buying press coverage doesn’t actually equal successful results.
The most iconic Polymath is clearly Leonardo Da Vinci, although the actual term came into common use long after his time. There are some interesting writings on Medium, but most are reciting other people’s political talking points, people in their 9th bad relationship telling others how the issues are entirely with the people they date, or middling “listicles”. I’ve yet to come across the blog article here that strikes me as the equivalent of the works of the Second Florentine Period. If you have, please let me know about it….just don’t link your own works as such.
Perhaps what we have is a “rebranding” by changing the definitions involved. If the polymath is the pinnacle of trying to master multiple disciplines in order to combine that knowledge to create and implement new ideas, what is at the other end of that spectrum? Here we come to a much more likely descriptor: Jack of all trades, master of none.
Being a Jack of All Trades, but master of none isn’t automatically a bad thing. It means you are potentially well rounded, and probably have met a wide variety of people in those different roles. You are likely an interesting person, and have a diverse skill set. You just aren’t a polymath, or the genius that get implied with that term.