people who are not Renaissance men

On Saturday, we compared the Renaissance man and the polymath. Previously, I had given you some unusual examples of people who were called polymaths but who were clearly not polymaths: a polymath trumpeter, a swimming polymath, and a tax polymath.

Here are just a couple of examples of people who have been called Renaissance men (women), but who do not seem to pass the test.

Jason Bay, former outfielder for several major league teams, from the July 8, 2009, Boston Globe (behind paywall), "If baseball had a Renaissance man - a guy who is constantly working on everything - it would be Bay."

George Young, retired football player and executive, "the Renaissance man of football."

the Renaissance man (woman) versus the polymath

As I wrote yesterday, the OED defines a Renaissance man as “one who exhibits the virtues of an idealized man of the Renaissance.”

And I defined a modern polymath as one who is proficient in or who has made significant accomplishments in at least two widely disparate fields or three less disparate fields.

So what exactly is the difference between a polymath and a Renaissance man (woman)?

It seems pretty clear. Polymath status is based solely on knowledge and intellectual achievements, whereas Renaissance man status is based primarily on factors other than one’s intellectual abilities and achievements. Braininess is one part of being a Renaissance man, but it is hardly the only part.

The Renaissance ideal was based on education, but, as the OED states, there was more to it than that.

One of the great Renaissance educators, Vittorino da Feltre, believed that a proper education should allow one to be able to discuss “natural philosophy (i.e., the sciences), ethics, the motion of the stars, geometry, harmony, arithmetic and surveying.”

The Renaissance humanists believed that the man who arose from this education was the perfect gentleman, a man who was not only accomplished in most fields of study, but also was athletic, skilled in military science, courteous, well spoken, artistic, and musical.  And, as if that wasn't enough, the ideal man was supposed to be able to do all that with grace and nonchalance.

Basically, he was supposed to be able to make the difficult look easy, an ability that the Italians called sprezzatura. The idea of sprezzatura came from the book that epitomized the Renaissance ideas, Baldasare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione wrote the Courtier to describe the qualities of the ideal gentleman, the courtier, i.e., one who spent his time at the court attending (and flattering) the king and queen.

Famed Renaissance historian William Harrison Woodward wrote that Castiglione’s courtier was “nothing less than the ideal personality as the Renaissance conceived it.”  Woodward wrote that the ideal personality of the Renaissance was to be developed in every way; i.e., to be a “complete gentleman.”  He should be a brave and competent soldier, but not a professional soldier, a superior athlete and sportsman, a “perfect horseman,” a competent dancer, and an excellent conversationalist, not just in content, but in style. He should be intelligent and well-read, a poet, an artist, a singer, and a musician. Not only should he be all this, but he should also dress well.

This was the “Renaissance man,” a learned and widely read man who used that learning as a springboard to become a gracious, virtuous, and multi-talented person.

Again, what is the difference between the two? Renaissance man status could incorporate polymathy, but not vice versa. A Renaissance man might be a polymath, but a polymath is not necessarily a Renaissance man.

the Renaissance man

I left off on Wednesday with the universal man moving into the “Renaissance man.”

But we should remember that, even though there was much talk about the universal man, i.e., the fully developed personality, during and after the Renaissance, the idea of universality in the Renaissance was restricted to the upper class.

The working class were not exactly studying Greek philosophy or astronomy during breaks from brick laying or manure shoveling. They lacked the time, the energy, or the money. Indeed, Renaissance historian Sir John Rigby Hale noted that the leisured upper class was attracted to the idea of universalism because it allowed them to distinguish themselves from people who had to work for a living.

The OED defines a Renaissance man simply as “one who exhibits the virtues of an idealized man of the Renaissance.” This is a surprisingly new term. It did not even appear in the 1933 first edition of the OED; it was not added until a later supplement.

While the OED does not list any uses of the phrase Renaissance man prior to 1906, when English historian William Harrison Woodward used it in his book Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance, it definitely missed a few early uses.

With the advantages of modern technology, a Google book search located a use of the phrase as far back as 1874, when scholar and writer Rev. Richard St. John Tyrwhitt used it in an article for the magazine Old and New.

However, the concept of the Renaissance man did not enter into popular usage for some time. The term did not appear in an American newspaper until 1907, and not in the New York Times until 1923.

the universal man

Well, that’s more than enough on Wittgenstein. I mentioned some time ago that I would discuss the concepts of the Renaissance man and the universal man. Let’s start with the universal man, which actually predates the Renaissance man.

Although the Renaissance popularized the concept of the universal man, the idea of the universal man is an old concept that actually predated the Renaissance man by several centuries in both English and Italian. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a universal man as one who is:

Instructed or learned in all or many subjects; having an extensive knowledge or experience; widely accomplished; interested in or devoted to a great variety of subjects; having a wide range of interests or activities. Also of the mind or disposition.

The OED tracked the appearance of the term in the English language to 1520, when William Caxton’s Chronicles of England referred to Roman Emperor Adrian (Hadrian) as “an vnyuersall man almost in all sciences.”

However, the Italian phrase is even older. The Italian version of the OED, the Grande Dizionario Della Lingua Italiana, traced the first usage of uomo universale to the 14^th century Italian writer Antonio Pucci, who used the phrase in his 1373 poem Centiloquio. The phrase was not at all uncommon in English at least until the 19^th century, but was then surpassed by the entry of the Renaissance man in the late nineteenth century, and is rarely used today.

The Renaissance and the universal man became connected, at least in English (and German), by the nineteenth century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. In his seminal work of Renaissance history, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, he wrote that the Renaissance era gave rise to what he called the “all-sided man – l’uomo universale.” He actually used the Italian phrase in his original German book.

Burckhardt felt that these universal men with “encyclopedic knowledge” were “masters of a vast circle of spiritual interests.” He described the universal man as a man who combined “comprehensive learning with the practice of one or more of the arts or professions.”

His archetype of the “universal man” was the 15^th century architect, artist, musician, and writer, Leon Battista Alberti (a clear polymath who we will get to eventually), who was known for saying, “Men can do all things if they will.”

But many centuries later, the English-speaking world replaced the earlier term “universal man,” and settled upon the term “Renaissance man” to describe this ideal person.

More tomorrow.

one more on Wittgenstein

Let’s just follow up a little more on Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He published the Tractatus in 1921. After that, he felt that he had solved all of the major problems in philosophy and retired from philosophy. He served in World War I (writing philosophy during his breaks), taught in several elementary schools in rural Austria for much of the 1920’s, became a gardener in a monastery, and then spent some time in Vienna working with his sister’s architect to design her new house.

He seemed to take to architecture, although he had no architectural training, and his sister’s house was the only architectural work that he ever did. Nevertheless, he listed himself for years in the Vienna city directory as an architect.

But his return to Vienna was also his return to philosophy. He realized that the Tractatus had indeed not solved all of the major problems of philosophy (although he must have been the only person on earth who had actually believed that it had), and returned to Cambridge in 1929.

However, he never had gotten a philosophy degree, and so he submitted the Tractatus as his doctoral thesis. After Bertrand Russell and the great ethical philosopher G.E. Moore conducted a perfunctory oral examination (which began with Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein chatting for a while until Russell said to Moore, "Go on, you've got to ask him some questions -- you're the professor,” and which closed with Wittgenstein telling his famous examiners, “Don’t worry, I know you’ll never understand it.”), Wittgenstein received his Ph.D., and was appointed a Fellow of Trinity College at Cambridge, where he remained for most of the next twenty years.

The Tractatus was the only book that Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. His Philosophical Investigations was published after his untimely death from prostate cancer just after his sixty-second birthday. This book, which also deals with language and thought,  has been considered a rejection of Wittgenstein’s arguments from the Tractatus (although the Tractatus did that well enough with its closing propositions in which Wittgenstein wrote, “he who understands me finally recognizes [my propositions] as senseless”).

And that is Ludwig Wittgenstein, aeronautical engineer, incomprehensible philosopher, and polymath.

more on Wittgenstein's engine

Here are two articles published in one of the journals of the British Royal Society about Wittgenstein's engine:

Ian Lemco 
Wittgenstein's aeronautical investigation

Notes Rec. R. Soc. 2007 61 39-51

John Cater, Ian Lemco 

Wittgenstein's combustion chamber

Notes Rec. R. Soc. 2009 63 95-104

Wittgenstein's jet

When I went to the BBC 4 site to get the link for the Great Lives show about Wittgenstein, I found a show titled Wittgenstein's Jet. It's indeed a show about Wittgenstein's engine. It seems like it's worth a listen.