How to think like a Renaissance man (or woman)

Author: Mike Colagrossi / Source: Big Think

Some of the greatest scientists and artists were polymaths.
Renaissance men or polymaths are people who have mastered multiple disciplines and pursuits. The path towards becoming one doesn’t always require some divine genius.
Interest in varied subjects and disciplines is the first path towards thinking like a polymath.

It’s not easy branching into different subjects today and mastering them. The sheer amount of knowledge and intellectual vocations floating around is enough to keep a million da Vinci’s busy for centuries. The amount of time and expertise many people dedicate to just one domain often leaves them bereft of any other subject mastery.

Yet, even today the staying power and mythologization of the polymath persists. There is good reason to believe that any scientific or civilization progress has been spurred and created off the backs of the multifaceted polymath. The alternative of hyper specialized disciplines has left us with siloed subfields and occluded knowledge which persists in some miasmic mix of cross-disciplinary stagnation and some kind of new scientific priest craft.

The prospects of learning how to think like a renaissance man pervade all levels of inquiry and culture. It’s not just our top scientists who could learn to branch into new disciplines, but regular curious everyday people can benefit too.

Praise for the specialist and disdain of the generalist

We often hear, somewhat disparagingly the phrase: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” This maxim seems to be a commonality across multiple languages and cultures.

For example, the Chinese also warn: “Equipped with knives all over, yet none is sharp.”

Now when you think about it, this is some very misplaced common sense gone awry. Many of the most impactful individuals throughout human history have been men and women with an unbelievable amount of varied interests and talents. It is because of this very reason that they were so successful in whatever they did.

Writer Robert Twigger believes that this faulty way of thinking about specialization versus applied generalized mastery is due to a phenomenon in which he coined the word monopath. He states:

“We hear the descriptive words psychopath and sociopath all the time, but here’s a new one: monopath. It means a person with a narrow mind, a one-track brain, a bore, a super-specialist, an expert with no other interests — in other words, the role-model of choice in the Western world.”

He believes that this stems from an economic viewpoint of success. Just as it’s become more efficient to interact with creating things through cut-off specialized points of contact – à la the assembly line production method, we seemed to have done the same thing with our own personal interests and talents.

Twigger then says:

“The monopathic model derives some of its credibility from its success in business. In the late 18th century, Adam Smith (himself an early polymath who wrote not only on economics but also philosophy, astronomy, literature and law) noted that the division of labour was the engine of capitalism. His famous example was the way in which pin-making could be broken down into its component parts, greatly increasing the overall efficiency of the production process.”

Because of this economic value that specialization presents us with, we tend to abandon any other divergent passions that we might be interested in. On top of that, we are also under the false impression that any true learning stops once you reach a certain age.