Peter Burke's The Polymath

I did read the book and found it pretty interesting. But it turns out that I'm not necessarily a great book reviewer. I read a book and then I'm generally more interested in hearing what other people said about the book then telling people what I think about a book.

So, if you're interested in polymaths and polymathy, read the book.

I had previously posted a couple of reviews if you're still on the fence about it.

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.

Peter Burke

I wrote that I had previously written about Peter Burke's ideas. Here is my post on his ideas on the four types of polymath.

Peter Burke, The Polymath

Polymathy is becoming a big industry. Historians, scientists, and other researchers and writers are increasingly paying attention to polymaths and polymathy. One of the leading recent thinkers on polymaths is the Cambridge historian Peter Burke, who has just published a new book, The Polymath: A cultural history from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag. Reviews of the book can be found here, here, and here, among other places.

Burke has been thinking and writing about polymaths and polymathy for quite a few years, and I have written about his ideas in the past.

I plan to review the book myself off and on over the coming weeks. But don't wait for my review. It's a fascinating and fabulous book. It is a must buy for anyone interested in polymathy.

The modern polymath defined

Today we put it all together. We need to keep in mind Heraclitus’s original concept, Andrew Robinson’s idea (broad learning and curiosity), and Carr’s and Djerassi’s breadth and acceptance requirements, and overlay these ideas on Burke’s serial and proper polymaths.

Burke’s prerequisite of “several” fields of expertise pays homage to Heraclitus’s original notion and is a good middle ground between requiring too many fields of expertise and too few. It acknowledges that a real polymath should work in “several” disciplines.

Accordingly, the modern polymath should be one who is proficient in or who has made significant accomplishments in at least two widely disparate fields or three less disparate fields. The more unrelated the fields, the more polymathic the person.

This definition can be gauged objectively and satisfies the breadth test. The acceptance requirement can be satisfied by professional licensure, by publications, or by acceptance by experts in those fields. The acceptance requirement also allows for the conclusion that, the more generally accepted as an expert such a person is in each of his/her fields, the more polymathic the person is.

This definition puts Hedy Lamarr (remember her from the PopMatters article?) squarely in polymath status (acting and electronics are about as far apart as two fields can be), but easily knocks out the swimming, trumpeting, and tax polymaths that I discussed earlier. However, it will allow us to recognize and appreciate the incredible achievement of a real modern polymath.

Now that we have this definition under control, we can look at other similar concepts (the Renaissance man, the universal man, etc.), and also start getting to know the Real Polymaths.

the modern polymath defined, part 4

Today, let’s review Cambridge cultural historian Peter Burke’s definition of the polymath. In fact, remember that he had four definitions:

The passive polymaths, who read widely but make their reputation in one discipline alone.

The limited polymaths, active in a small cluster of neighboring disciplines.

The serial polymaths, whose interests gradually shifted from one discipline to others.

The 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.

Also remember that Burke lamented that polymathy “has been diluted to refer to people who have mastered two or three disciplines.”

How should we work these definitions into our own?

The limited polymath is clearly out as a definition for our modern polymath. Yesterday, I suggested that the learning of a microbiologist and neurobiologist is not broad enough to be fully polymathic. That is a good example of Burke’s limited polymath.

But what about his passive polymath and his serial polymath?

The biggest problem, it seems, with the passive polymath is that it is very hard to determine that person’s polymathic qualities. How do you figure out if that person has read widely enough to qualify as a true polymath? I don’t know. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

But the serial polymath seems pretty legitimate to me. So what if the person concentrated in one field and then moved on to a different field? There has never been a rule that a polymath has to engage in all of his/her fields of interest at the same time. Some undoubtedly have, but that’s not a requirement, at least not to me.

And then of course, we have Burke’s proper polymath, which is a pretty legitimate polymath.

So, when we come up with our definition, possibly even tomorrow, we’ll want to factor in Burke’s concepts of the serial and proper polymaths.

more on Peter Burke's passive polymath

Yesterday, I introduced Cambridge historian Peter Burke's four types of polymaths. The first was the passive polymath, who reads widely but makes his/her reputation in one discipline alone.

Here are a couple of thoughts on the passive polymath. What does "reputation" mean for the purposes of being a polymath? What should it mean?

What if the person reads widely and is clearly an expert in one discipline, but does not have a  "reputation" in that discipline? What if he/she has mastered that one discipline, goes to work every day in that field, and does a good job, but has never written any papers in that field, has never given any speeches, and is really not known outside his or her company? Does that person still qualify as a passive polymath?

Peter Burke on polymathy

We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with respect to good definitions of polymathy. The other day I talked about Edward Carr’s “breadth” test and Carl Djerassi’s influence and acceptance tests for polymathy.

Today, we’ll talk about four separate ways to think about polymathy. They come from the distinguished Cambridge historian Peter Burke, who is most well known as a historian of the Renaissance, but who has also written a couple of excellent books on knowledge and cultural history. In fact, he calls himself a cultural historian.

He has also done a lot of thinking about polymathy recently. In his 2010 essay, “The polymath: A cultural and social history of an intellectual species,” he proposed a new understanding of the modern polymath that has attempted to take into account the limitations on polymathy caused by specialization. He lamented that polymathy “has been diluted to refer to people who have mastered two or three disciplines,” and suggested categorizing the modern polymath into four distinct groups:

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.

Finally, we’re getting somewhere with understanding what a polymath really is. Professor Burke has nailed it in my opinion.

I’ll leave you to think about his classification overnight, and we’ll talk more about it later.