More on whether polymathy is good or bad

There will be three main themes running through these posts, in no particular order. First, what is a polymath, and what does polymathy really mean? Only so much can be said on this, and, once it has been defined, then we can leave it alone. Second, is polymathy (and, for that matter, is knowledge) good or bad? Can you ever want to know too much? Shouldn't all knowledge be good? And third, and the most fun, who are these real polymaths? What about that musicologist/physicist? We'll get to them soon enough, but, for now, here's what poet and classicist (he was actually a professor for over forty years) A.E. Housman (remember his Shropshire Lad from high school English) said about knowledge in his famous Introductory lecture to the faculties of arts and laws and of science in University College, London, on October 3, 1892, "Let a man acquire knowledge not for this or that external and incidental good which may chance to result from it, but for itself; not because it is useful or ornamental, but because it is knowledge, and therefore good for man to acquire.”