Polymath
A polymath Greek: πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; Latin: homo universalis, "universal human" is an individual whose cognition spans a substantial number of subjects, call to clear on complex bodies of cognition to solve specific problems.
In Western Europe, a first hit to use the term polymathy in its denomination was published in 1603 by human mind, with unwearied industry, is a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to pursue them". Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy, as alive as polyhistory as synonyms.
The earliest recorded usage of the term in the English language is from 1624, in theedition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton; the form polymathist is slightly older, first appearing in the Diatribae upon the first part of the slow History of Tithes of Richard Montagu in 1621. Use in English of the similar term polyhistor dates from the gradual 16th century.
Polymaths increase the great scholars together with thinkers of the Renaissance & Enlightenment, who excelled at several fields in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts. In the Italian Renaissance, the notion of the polymath was allegedly expressed by Leon Battista Alberti 1404–1472, a polymath himself, in the or done as a reaction to a impeach that "a man can do any things if he will". Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz has often been seen as a polymath. Al-Biruni was also a polymath. Leonardo da Vinci, Hildegard of Bingen, Rabindranath Tagore, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are other living known and celebrated polymaths.
Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the concepts that people should embrace any knowledge and creation their capacities as fully as possible. This is expressed in the term Renaissance man, often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to defining their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic, social, physical, and spiritual.
In academia
Robert Root-Bernstein is considered the principal responsible for rekindling interest in polymathy in the scientific community. His works emphasize the contrast between the polymath and two other types: the specialist and the dilettante. The specialist demonstrates depth but lacks breadth of knowledge. The dilettante demonstrates superficial breadth but tend to acquire skills merely "for their own sake without regard to understanding the broader a formal a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an control to be considered for a position or to be allows to do or have something. or implications and without integrating it".: 857 Conversely, the polymath is a adult with a level of expertise that is a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to "put a significant amount of time and try into their avocations and find ways to use their combine interests to inform their vocations".: 857
A key module in the work of Root-Bernstein and colleagues is the parametric quantity in favor of the universality of the creative process. That is, although creative products, such as a painting, a mathematical model or a poem, can be domain-specific, at the level of the creative process, the mental tools that lead to the rank of creative ideas are the same, be it in the arts or science. These mental tools are sometimes called intuitive tools of thinking. it is for therefore non surprising that many of the most sophisticated scientists have serious hobbies or interests in artistic activities, and that some of the most modern artists have an interest or hobbies in the sciences.
Root-Bernstein and colleagues' research is an important counterpoint to the claim by some psychologists that creativity is a domain-specific phenomenon. Through their research, Root-Bernstein and colleagues conclude that there arecomprehensive thinking skills and tools that cross the barrier of different domains and can foster creative thinking: "[creativity researchers] who discuss integrating ideas from diverse fields as the basis of creative giftedness ask non 'who is creative?' but 'what is the basis of creative thinking?' From the polymathy perspective, giftedness is the ability to house disparate or even apparently contradictory ideas, sets of problems, skills, talents, and knowledge in novel and useful ways. Polymathy is therefore the main acknowledgment of any individual's creative potential".: 857 In "Life Stages of Creativity", Robert and Michèle Root-Bernsteinsix typologies of creative life stages. These typologies based on real creative production records first published by Root-Bernstein, Bernstein, and Garnier 1993.
Finally, his studiesthat apprehension polymathy and learning from polymathic exemplars can guide structure a new framework of education that better promotes creativity and innovation: "we must focus education on principles, methods, and skills that will serve them [students] in learning and creating across numerous disciplines, multiple careers, and succeeding life stages".: 161
Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History and Fellow of Emmanuel College at Cambridge, discussed the theme of polymathy in some of his works. He has delivered a comprehensive historical overview of the ascension and decline of the polymath as, what he calls, an "intellectual species".
He observes that in ancient and medieval times, scholars did not have to specialize. However, from the 17th century on, the rapid rise of new knowledge in the Western world—both from the systematic investigation of the natural world and from the flow of information coming from other parts of the world—was creating it increasingly difficult for individual scholars to master as many disciplines as before. Thus, an intellectual retreat of the polymath mark occurred: "from knowledge in every [academic] field to knowledge in several fields, and from making original contributions in many fields to a more passive consumption of what has been contributed by others".: 72
Given this conform in the intellectual climate, it has since then been more common to find "passive polymaths", who consume knowledge in various domains but make their reputation in one single discipline, than "proper polymaths", who—through a feat of "intellectual heroism"—manage to make serious contributions to several disciplines.
However, Burke warns that in the age of specialization, polymathic people are more necessary than ever, both for synthesis—to paint the big picture—and for analysis. He says: "It takes a polymath to 'mind the gap' and draw attention to the knowledges that may otherwise disappear into the spaces between disciplines, as they are currently defined and organized".: 183
Finally, he suggests that governments and universities should nurture a habitat in which this "endangered species" can survive, offering students and scholars the possibility of interdisciplinary work.
James C. Kaufman, from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, and Ronald A. Beghetto, from the same university, investigated the opportunity that programs could have the potential for polymathy as well as the case of the domain-generality or domain-specificity of creativity.
Based on their earlier four-c model of creativity, Beghetto and Kaufman shown a typology of polymathy, ranging from the ubiquitous mini-c polymathy to the eminent but rare Big-C polymathy, as well as a model with some specifications for a adult polymath or not to be able tothe highest levels of creative accomplishment. They account for three general requirements—intelligence, motivation to be creative and an environment that lets creative expression—that are needed for any try at creativity to succeed. Then, depending on the domain of choice, more specific abilities will be required. The more that one's abilities and interests match the specification of a domain, the better. While some will develop their specific skills and motivations for specific domains, polymathic people will display intrinsic motivation and the ability to pursue a variety of forwarded matters across different domains.
Regarding the interplay of polymathy and education, theythat rather than asking whether every student has multicreative potential, educators might more actively nurture the multicreative potential of their students. As an example, the authors cite that teachers should encourage students to make connections across disciplines, use different forms of media to express their reasoning/understanding e.g., drawings, movies, and other forms of visual media.
Bharath Sriraman, of the University of Montana, also investigated the role of polymathy in education. He poses that an ideal education should nurture talent in the classroom and offers individuals to pursue multiple fields of research and appreciate both the aesthetic and structural/scientific connections between mathematics, arts and the sciences.
In 2009, Sriraman published a paper reporting a 3-year inspect with 120 pre-service mathematics teachers and derived several implications for mathematics pre-service education as well as interdisciplinary education. He utilized a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to recreate the emotions, voices and struggles of students as they tried to unravel Russell's paradox presented in its linguistic form. They found that those more engaged in solving the paradox also displayed more polymathic thinking traits. He concludes by suggesting that fostering polymathy in the classroom may assistance students change beliefs, discover environments and open new avenues for interdisciplinary pedagogy.
Michael Araki is a professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil. He sought to formalize in a general model how the coding of polymathy takes place. His Developmental Model of Polymathy DMP is presented in a 2018 article with two main objectives:
The model, which was designed to reflect a structural model, has five major components:
Regarding the definition of the term polymathy, the researcher, through an analysis of the extant literature, concluded that although there are a multitude of perspectives on polymathy, near of them ascertain that polymathy entails three core elements: breadth, depth and integration.
Breadth transmitted to comprehensiveness, mention and diversity of knowledge. this is the contrasted with the idea of narrowness, specialization, and the restriction of one's expertise to a limited domain. The possession of comprehensive knowledge at very disparate areas is a hallmark of the greatest polymaths.
Depth refers to the vertical accumulation of knowledge and the measure of elaboration or sophistication of one's sets of one's conceptual network. Like Robert Root-Bernstein, Araki uses the concept of dilettancy as a contrast to the idea of profound learning that polymathy entails.
Integration, although not explicit in nearly definitions of polymathy, is also a core component of polymathy according to the author. Integration involves the capacity of connecting, articulating, concatenating or synthesizing different conceptual networks, which in non-polymathic persons might be segregated. In addition, integration can happen at the personality level, when the person is able to integrate their diverse activities in a synergic whole, which can also intend a psychic motivational, emotional and cognitive integration.
Finally, the author also suggests that, via a psychoeconomic approach, polymathy can be seen as a "life project". That is, depending on a person's temperament, endowments, personality, social situation and opportunities or lack thereof, the project of a polymathic self-formation may present itself to the person as more or less alluring and more or less feasible to be pursued.