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There's only a very small number of exceptional people who are so smart that they just understand everything without effort. Terry Tao comes to mind. Everybody

There's only a very small number of exceptional people who are so smart that they just understand everything without effort. Terry Tao comes to mind. Everybody else has to pick and choose what they understand, most "very smart" people are still only very smart within a certain domain. This is more of a reflection of the richness of our world rather than the limitations of the human mind. In Ancient Greece, it was possible for polymaths to exist, people who could contribute to the many disciplines that existed then. Then, Poincare has the title of "the last universalist" because of his contributions to many areas of mathematics. Now, no such generalist can exist, everything requires specialisation. But that is a good thing. It means that human knowledge is incredibly rich.

manquer 5y ago
Depends on how you see it . Yes you are right in sense that, in the ancient the number of educated people -> scholars -> professionals who could dedicate the life to research was small. It was far easier (easier than today not easy itself) to be able to dabble in many topics. [1] [2] As you say much of what can be researched by a general philosopher who dabbles in many fields is already done, today to go further in any one field you will need to dedicate your life to it in mathematics or physics or other older fields of research. That does not mean there are less generalists today. There are plenty of generalists in younger/newer fields like it was in math or physics back in those days . Generalist scientists like Dr Lovelock was possible in the 60s. Generalist computer scientists was common till not that long ago. Generalist programmers were(are) there when I started in the industry, today to hire proper "full stack" developer is getting harder! Point is generalists or specialization is always there, just the fields where it can happen keep changing. --- [1] We have to remember many of them were also institutions which they were only the head of, rather than only individual contributors, so attribution could be more to their school than them necessarily individually. [2] A lot of the early work by ancient scholars was more documentation and formalization of somewhat known items than discovery or invention in the modern sense

manquer 5y ago

Depends on how you see it . Yes you are right in sense that, in the ancient the number of educated people -> scholars -> professionals who could dedicate the life to research was small. It was far easier (easier than today not easy itself) to be able to dabble in many topics. [1] [2] As you say much of what can be researched by a general philosopher who dabbles in many fields is already done, today to go further in any one field you will need to dedicate your life to it in mathematics or physics or other older fields of research. That does not mean there are less generalists today. There are plenty of generalists in younger/newer fields like it was in math or physics back in those days . Generalist scientists like Dr Lovelock was possible in the 60s. Generalist computer scientists was common till not that long ago. Generalist programmers were(are) there when I started in the industry, today to hire proper "full stack" developer is getting harder! Point is generalists or specialization is always there, just the fields where it can happen keep changing. --- [1] We have to remember many of them were also institutions which they were only the head of, rather than only individual contributors, so attribution could be more to their school than them necessarily individually. [2] A lot of the early work by ancient scholars was more documentation and formalization of somewhat known items than discovery or invention in the modern sense