Peter Burke's The Polymath

Before we get to The Polymath, let's recap Burke's thoughts on polymathy. Remember that, in a 2010 essay, “The polymath: A cultural and social history of an intellectual species,” he proposed a set of new definitions of the modern polymath:

1. The passive polymaths, who read widely but make their reputation in one discipline alone.
2. The limited polymaths, active in a small cluster of neighboring disciplines.
3. The serial polymaths, whose interests gradually shifted from one discipline to others.
4. Most remarkable of all, is a fourth group, proper polymaths who have continued to work in several fields and to make serious contributions to all of them, keeping several balls in the air at the same time rather than picking them up one by one.

He wrote that essay in an obscure collection titled Explorations in Cultural History: Essays for Peter Gabriel McCaffery, a book that appears to be out of print at this time.

He may have arrived at his interest in polymaths from his work on the social history of knowledge: A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot and A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopaedia to Wikipedia.

Either way, he is now one of the world's leading experts on polymaths and polymathy.

And with this brief background, we can now delve into his new book.