The Postmodernist Renaissance Man

Thomas Young - One of our greatest polymaths

We use a phrase in the English language: «A renaissance man» - which translates to something like «excellence in many fields». Now a days I think that is hard to achieve. Knowledge was not found in such abundance in the renaissance as it is now. Theirs was still largely an oral culture - even though the Gutenberg press had revolutionized printing (or invented it rather), and the public sphere saw it’s first births. Men went to university then - and learned knowledge universal. They became polymaths, which is another way to say that they became «jacks of all trades». And that proverb truly had more positive connotations then, than it does now. Only later was the suffix of «master of none» added.

Of course it is the remarkable intellects of the time that are still remembered. I’m sure there were plenty of air headed academics back then too, who weren’t so much polymaths as dilettantes. They had, as the spanish say, «An ocean of knowledge, only an inch deep».

Today the times are different. And though most of us can’t actually retain an ocean of knowledge and skills, we at least have them readily at hand. A search of the phone and we can name any date a famous figure was born, list the recordings of the Beatles, or find the name of «that actor». The only skill required is the skill to find that information. The academics of the day aren’t so much knowledge retainers as knowledge judgers - and as such don’t quite fit the criteria of the renaissance  man/woman or polymath. First with the industrial revolution, and then the evolution of modernity, our time has become an age of specialization. Where, instead of a few learning it all, everyone learns something very specific very well.. To continue our spanish analogy: A million ponds of unfathomable depths. Remarkable.

Still we should expect today to find some remarkable minds, shouldn’t we? After all; there are many more people alive just today, than lived during the whole fourteenth and fifteenth century combined. Surely there should be some polymathic Da- Vinci's around. But I think they would be a bit harder to identify. Specialization divides us to such an extent, that an expert in one field, wouldn’t be able to understand an expert in another. And however clever, no man could come to terms with them all. But perhaps we could modify our expectations to fit our times: The postmodernist version of the renaissance man: A jack of all trades - master of some.

We all see postmodernism as something near fatalistic, like: «oh -it’s all endless, vast and relative, so one might as well not bother at all.» . Still - there is a certain pleasure of acquiring knowledge at some depths. You feel like you become part of what you study. Not a master of it per- se, but one with it. That is actually how I sometimes feel when I master a particularly difficult sociological theory, or manage to identify natural phrases in a particularly complex jazz- piece. Or even just to realize the true depth of that ocean of knowledge you're swimming in - it’s a fantastic feeling. It makes me feel like a dilettante on a constant road to polymathism. Or if you will: A jack of all trades - master of some.