The Progress of Knowledge

The Polymath isn't dead and there are still great men around who are able to contribute towards the development of knowledge in a number of key areas. The modern world, though, is one where specialists predomoninate and with the progress of time it can be increasingly difficult for people to have a broad grasp of their own particular subject and we are often pushed into ever narrower areas.

There is danger to society in this dependence and if society struggled to produce them for a period of time most of our modern world would collapse. We should never forget that even though we live in a time of plenty, our cities are only a matter of weeks from starvation. How many of us have stocks of tins in our cupboards like previous generations? Having people with a broader knowledge base and less dependent on specialists ensures socieity is more robust, whereas ours is increasingly fragile.

It also means those with great brains, of ilk of Thomas Young from a few hundred years ago, are unable to contribute as they once would have, although, you could argue we have more educated people now so it should deliver us more great brains. They still will typically contribute in only one area whereas in the past we would have had a much broader benefit from their genius.

The additional problem is that everywhere in many ways the knowledge base of an individual is shrinking and it is often acceptable to be ignorant. Creativity is often driven, in my view, by someone that can bring a new way of looking at problem, a new angle or perhaps something they have seen in a different area or study or analysis. We are losing the cross fertilization that has helped make previous epochs creative and this is exacerbated by the increasing specialization of the modern wold.