more on the merits and faults of polymathy and great learning

Some more interesting positions on polymathy and the acquisition of knowledge come from the Middle Ages. Perhaps the greatest polymath ever, Leonardo da Vinci, was for it until he was against it, jotting in his notebooks, “The acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever is always useful to the intellect,”  and “Like a kingdom divided, which rushes to its doom, the mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”

But the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus and the great philosopher, scientist, and writer Francis Bacon were unequivocally in favor. Erasmus adopted a line from one of the plays of the ancient Greek playwright Menander, “nothing is sweeter than knowing everything,” as one of his famous Adages, and Bacon wrote in his Advancement of Learning that knowledge “appeareth to be good in itself.”

But another famous Dutchman, the political philosopher and lawyer Hugo Grotius, was not so sure; his dying words were, “By understanding many things, I have accomplished nothing.”

So it certainly seems that famous and learned people throughout the centuries have been for and against great knowledge and learning, and some of them have been both for and against it.