Where oh Where is My Polymath?

I really like guys who can talk about finance. And politics. And molecular biology. And now evolutionary biology. And the law. And morality and ethics. And obscure social constructs. I really like guys who know about everything.

And you’d think Yale University would be the place to find that guy? Well, maybe he exists, but it feels a monumental task to find him. But, more so than my unreasonable taste in fellas, I think this is indicative of my generation’s loss of the polymath.

Maybe the polymath I'm looking for
is in my beloved Sterling Memorial Library

For those who haven’t bothered to look it up, a polymath, as defined by the OED, is “A person of great or varied learning; a person acquainted with many fields of study; an accomplished scholar”. Alfred Russel Wallace comes to mind. He’s most famous (as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts; sorry for being repetitive!) for not getting his due credit on the theory of evolution by natural selection. But after his work was jointly published with Darwin, Wallace went on to do some other impressive, although questionable things.

Wallace held well-respected opinions on social policy, publishing Land Nationalisation; Its Necessity and Its Aims in 1882. He also backed a monetary system based on pure paper money, and declared himself a socialist. Wallace, to my hearty displeasure, was also set firmly against vaccination in the Victorian era. And, in The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures, Wallace analyzed the scientific and technological advances of the 19^th century, but also criticized the century’s social shortcomings. Clearly, Wallace was well versed in all the relevant topics of the era.

I don’t think that person exists today, the modern Renaissance man who can be well-respected across even wholly different disciplines. Much of that has to do with the culture of skepticism that has pervaded Western culture since the Enlightenment. But more than that, people confine themselves to certain areas of pronouncement. For example, in class we read Huxley’s 1874 On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History. More than one of us, including one of our professors, thought that it was odd that a British naturalist was pronouncing the nature of mankind as it relates to theological matters. Is science not firmly out of the religious realm? Alfred Russel Wallace clearly did not think so.

The Lourdes Basilica Church
I'll get a chance to learn from Alessandro Francisis,
Director of the Lourdes Medical Bureau tomorrow.

Perhaps it’s just too difficult to be so widely read today. There is simply just too much knowledge in the world to be conversant in all areas of potential study. And there’s the very real possibility that no one will take you seriously if you do decide to comment on such varied matters. Given that I’m in no danger of being mistaken for a polymath, I’ll take my sweet time learning from all those almost-Renaissance figures about me now.