the early Greeks on polymathy, part 2

And some more thoughts about polymathy from the ancient Greeks.

From Isocrates, a great teacher of rhetoric and one of Plato’s competitors, “If you love knowledge (i.e., be a philosopher), you will be a master of knowledge (i.e., a polymath) (To Demonicus, 18).

But Isocrates saw both sides of the issue, saying, “Likely conjecture about useful things is far preferable to exact knowledge of the useless, and that to be a little superior in important things is of greater worth than to be pre-eminent in petty things that are without value for living.” (Helen, 5).

Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, was not necessarily a fan. When someone gave him airs for his wide learning (i.e., his polymathy), he said: “As those who eat most and take the most exercise are not better in health than those who restrict themselves to what they require, so too it is not wide reading but useful reading that tends to excellence.” (quoted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book II, Chapter 8, line 71).

Anaxarchus, another early philosopher, said, “Much learning (polymathy) can help much, but also can greatly harm him who has it. It helps the clever man, but harms him who readily utters every word in any company.” (fragment 1).

And I had written that the famed playwright Menander had one of his characters say, “Nothing is sweeter than knowing everything.” (The Arbitrants, fragment 2, 850 K).

But Timon of  Phlius, a poet and Skeptic philosopher, positively disparaged it, saying, “Nothing can be more useless than polymathy.” (from Deipnosophists, 610b).

And Callimachus, a librarian at the great Library of Alexandria and a renowned poet in his right, said, “Much knowledge is a bad thing when someone does not control his tongue.” (Aetia, fragment 75.8-10).

Is polymathy good or bad?

We’ll get back to Heraclitus soon, but, meanwhile, is polymathy good or bad? Regardless of polymathy’s precise definition, is it a good or bad thing to have “great learning.” It certainly seems like a good thing. What could be bad about it?

It turns out that, over the years, philosophers and scholars have had an awful lot to say about that since Heraclitus's time. Plato, one of the greatest philosophers, wrote in his Laws that “a wide range of learning [i.e., polymathy] involves danger to children,” and “wide variety of knowledge and learning [polymathy] combined with bad training” is not the way that children should be educated. Wow! That’s a pretty serious condemnation of knowing a lot.

But Plato’s philosophic rival Isocrates, who founded a competing academy, took the opposite position. He wrote in his oration To Demonicus, “If you are a lover of wisdom [i.e., a philosopher], you will be a master of knowledge [i.e., a polymath].” So Isocrates said that, in order to be a philosopher, one must be a polymath. He was said to be so fond of this maxim that he had it written in golden letters at the front door of his school.

I like Isocrates’ opinion better. Maybe Plato was just reminding us that a little learning is a dangerous thing, but I subscribe to the theory that it is generally good to know more, rather than less.