Modern polymath
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The first three had a truly extraordinary depth and breadth of knowledge and intellectual accomplishments, and Hecataeus was distinguished in three fields.
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Xenophanes was a poet and early scientist who wrote about the elements, the earth and cosmos, the gods, history, philosophy, and the weather and meteorological phenomena, and Hecataeus was a celebrated geographer, historian, and cartographer. Pythagoras was renowned for his excellence in mathematics and geometry (the Pythagorean Theorem), philosophy, astronomy, and music.
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The Greeks considered Hesiod to be the authoritative source of history, the gods, astronomy, farming, and other useful information. Hesiod was the second great early Greek poet, after Homer. So who were Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus, and what did they do? For it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and Hecataeus.” Regrettably, no one knows anymore what Heraclitus actually meant by polymathy, but perhaps examining who Heraclitus’s polymaths actually were might shed some light on what he actually meant. It was the philosopher Heraclitus, who is most well-known today for having said that one could not step twice into the same river, who coined the term, saying, “Much learning (polymathy) does not teach understanding. But we still have the same problem what does it really mean?
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And that’s what it means today so it turns out that the word hasn’t changed at all in 2,500 years. It comes from the ancient Greek polymathis, which means having learnt much. The word’s origin is found in ancient Greece. What is great or varied learning? How many fields of study is polymathic study, and how much acquaintance with these fields of study does someone have to have in order to be considered a polymath? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a polymath is a person of great or varied learning a person acquainted with many fields of study or an accomplished scholar. Thus, we need to tease out the true definition of polymathy in the modern era. After all, as Socrates might have said, How can we really talk about something until it has been defined? Knowing what polymathy really is might get journalists, critics, and others to stop throwing the term around so loosely and certainly will permit us to have a more informed debate about polymathy and its merits (or lack of). “A scientist who composes operas and writes novels is more of a polymath than a novelist who can turn out a play or a painter who can sculpt.”Ī polymath may strike you as a really smart person, possibly even a person with multiple, even disparate, interests, hobbies, or avocations, but how many different accomplishments or interests qualifies one as polymathic? How intellectual and/or widely disparate must these accomplishments be? Can excellence at, for example, both dog breeding and cross-country skiing qualify as polymathic accomplishments? Was the 20th century leading actress, the gorgeous and brilliant Hedy Lamarr, who (among other things) co-invented and patented a guidance system for torpedoes, a polymath?