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.

10 things to share (1)

This is a new post I'll be doing from time to time. In it I'll be sharing some of the cool stuff I encounter as I personally crawl the web. These things might be anything from a good arcticle to a funny video. Each entry will get a keyword, so that it is easy to seach it up on my blog. Enjoy these first ten links from me!


1: Thank Goodness! by Daniel Dennett (Article)
    Written by professor of philosophy at Tufts university, and prominent atheist Dan Dennett, about     being grateful for human kindness.


2: s_11 by Benjamin Sichert (Video)
    I love HDR photography. I love DSLR video. I love decaying industrial complexes, and I love slow footage on a slide. This video provides it all.



3: Note to media: We are all brands now, so get used to it. by Mathew Ingram. (Article)
    Ingram talks about how social media like twitter, facebook and google+ is forcing individual writers to proliferate themselves and become brands. This trend is reinforced by googles new feature that brings writers up in the search results when the article is presented.

4: xkcd: Connoisseur by Randall Munroe (comic strip)
    Honestly, most of the xkcd comic strips are wonderful. Some are about computer science, some about life, some about philosophy and some about mathermatcs - but all are wonderfully nerdy!


5: darkcopy.com by DarkCopy (online writing program)
    This is an online text editor along the same lines as WriteRoom. It will serve you well for your simple writing needs, but since this is an online program I miss features to easily save your file in the cloud. One of the most beautuful things about this, is that you can fill your screen with it, so that it looks like your writing on a computer from the last century.


6: Upending Anonymity, These Days the Web Unmasks Everyone by Brian Stelter (Article)
    This is an observation that...well.. other more techy media have covered a long time ago. But you know... The New York times does lend some credibility, and if they have picked up on it, then it's probably come a long way.


7: Strandbeests by Theo Jansen (TED video)
    The Strandbeests are machines that the kinetic sculpurer Theo Jansen sets loose on beaches. He also talks in a fancy way about cultural items ability to spread due to their compatibility with our mind, whatever that means.


8: Fingerprintsweb by Per Stornes (Free awesome online music)
    This is the web page Per Stornes has dedicated to his music. He is a former active member of the Harstad blues environment, but now only makes music in between family life and sociology lectures. He is also and active "kaffesosiolog".


9: Home Chalkboard use, and library  by Shelterness (design blog)
    I actually like interior decorating, and two ideas I've had a for a long time is covering a wall with a chalkboard, and one wall with a bookshelf. These are just fanciful ideas, and I don't know if I can ever  do it. (justifying buying that many books will be hard), but I love to see how people have done this in their homes.


10: Why seeing (The Unexpected) is often not believing by Alix Spiegel (article)
       This is a wonderful story about a real life situation spurred on researchers to do experiments that mimic reality - and which ultimately will help many people from not being convicted. Unfortunately it was too late for the victim in the court system, but the story is engaging.
    

Riding the culture wave

Hey
This is something I just noticed on big think. As you may or may not know, I'm currently in the state of rapture, for descovering all these great ideas about evolution, culture, the mind and more that propels my joy an creativity. Just today I listened to an interview with Paul Bloom of Yale university. He is a professor of developing psychology. The whole interview was in it self very interesting, but he praticularily said something about the personal exploration of taste that just struck a chord within me.

Two expressions: 1: "Exposure effect": The effect that the more you experience of it the more you like it.
2: "The inverted u- shape": First you kind of don't like it, then you like it more and more until finally you start getting bored with it.

The thought I came up with I call riding the wave to sophistication. (Sophistication means developed by experience). So, while experience, for instance, music you can start out simple, learn the ropes, and when you are about to tip the boredom mark, move on to something similar but more challengig. In (some sort of quazi) theory you could ride that succession of waves right on to the edge of your cognitive ability. Until the music becomes so complex you won't be able to "understand" it, or until with food, you can't hold any more tastes in your mind, or with squash, the game becomes to complex. I mean, this theory is very positive in my view. It means that as long as you enjoy something, there is only one thing to do; slowly evolve for the better.

The downside to this, is that if you always evolve your taste or ability in this way, the materials of your pleasures tend to become more expensive. Well, that is, supposing there is a linear way to go when it comes to these things. When discussing these things there are almoast moral conciderations to take. Two things to ponder:

Is more complex really better? I know for a fact that Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit: Ondine" is more complex than the "Shaun the sheep" intro melody, but does that make the music better? Perhaps it is just that the ability to enjoy the complex music is blocked for those lacking the experience, and not that there is something intrisically better with the music.

And also: Do we like things because they are exclusive? (complexity naturally excludes). The notion that this is only for me, because of my increased worth of a human being is a tantalizing thought, because it boasts our ego. And we for some reason like getting our egos boasted. Not only does the complexity exclude, but also the cost of many of the things we believe to be better. But keeping in mind the former paragraph, it might not even make sense to say that we need to be able to discern what has a fake elevated status because of is exentic value, and what should rigly be praised because of it's intrinsic value, because we have no way of impartially value one over the other.

Indeed. When not in the presence of a cognient entity with the aparatus to detect something as music, music would just be... sound. To us, removing humans from the world would... flatten it, for the lack of a better word.
Actually art is a good example, because we have such high thoughts about art.
We think that art becomes art, because the objects themselves are put in the "natural context" of being art; appreciated for their shape of form, or because it is in a gallery or similar environ. However, even when standing in an art gallery, there would be nothing whatsoever that would imply to you that this is important because this is an art gallery. You would only think this WAS an art gallery, and that within it was art, because long ago someone told you that this kind of space was exactly that.

These views are put forth rather more elloquently by Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen graphic novel. The world is not composed of hope, faith, art, justice and beauty. The world is entierly made up of atoms, ordered in molecules and structures like salts. There is no room in newtonic or relativistic physics for love, or hate.

But why am I at all speaking of this? Am I in fact trying to imply, that because love and beauty does not exist, that it does not matter? Not at all! That something "matters" is in fact just another human invention.

But what other measure do we have?

So to answer some of the more answerable questions in this post. Exclusiveness is not a prerequisite for quality. That much stands to reason. But the notion of complexity however might hold some merit: Because in the action of unravveling the, to us, mysteries of this inherent complexity there lies a joy, and it is the joy which in this sense is important. In a sense, why we feel a good sense of accomplishement over enjoying Stravinsky or Chopin is not an important question at all. Merely that we do matter.

And it is here, that I think the knowledge of riding the cultural wave could be important. The message to us as thinkers is: If you stand still, you are in fact going backwards. The status quo is never non- action, it is movement. Da Vinci said it wonderfully:

"Iron rusts from dissuse, stagnant water looses it's purity. So also does inactivity sap the vigour of the mind."

But riding the wave is actually also moving forward. There is an end there to our endevours, which is represented in short by our intelligence. There is at least, only so much complexity my mind can handle.