We’ve talked about Heraclitus having invented the word
polymathy, but we don’t know precisely what he meant. That is why we are having
this investigation. How much knowledge is polymathic knowledge?!
If you read the academic journals, you will see that modern
interpretations of Heraclitus’s use of the word polymathy are inconsistent.
Actually, they’re not just inconsistent; they’re all over the place.
For example, some scholars translated it quite broadly as “learning
many things,” “the possession of a huge reservoir of information,” or “a
knowledge embracing the greatest possible number of bodies of knowledge.”
That sounds pretty reasonable. Polymathy certainly sounds
like it should mean a whole lot of knowledge.
But, on the other hand, the famed classicist W.K.C. Guthrie defined
it as “learning such as might be obtained from a study of the poets, who in
Greece were the recognized teachers of men in theology, morals and other
matters including arts and crafts.” You may remember that I mentioned that the other day.
And the philosopher and historian Jonathan Barnes has argued
that, because the Greek manthanein (which
is where polymathy comes from) meant “to learn from another,” polymathy to
Heraclitus referred to getting “a large stock of opinions from other men.”
Thus, to Barnes, polymathy was not necessarily much knowledge, but many
opinions.
Heraclitus was obviously a really important guy, so a lot of
people have studied him over the years. We’ve just looked at a couple of these
opinions, and already they’re starting to get pretty different.
We’ll look at some more modern opinions of Heraclitus later.
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