What Is Polymathy? What Are Some Examples of Polymaths?

Etymology

The words polymathy and polymath come from the Greek word polys (“many”, “much”) and the root of the Greek word manthanein (“to learn”).

Based on etymology only, polymathy means “many learnings”, “much learning”, or “great learning” and other forms of the word are polymathia and polymathia. Polymath means “having learnt much” and another form of the word is polumathe.

History

The earliest known use of the term polymathy dates to 1642 and comes from Moravian polymath John Amos Comenius’s Reformation of Schooles, but a different form of the word, polymathia, appears eighty-four years earlier, in 1558, in Italian jurist Marcus Mantua Benavides’s book Polymathia.

For the term polymath, evidence of first use dates to 1606, in the form polumathes, and comes from English author Robert Burton’s play Philosophaster.

Below is a list of six examples of historical uses of polymathy and polymath. As a reminder, for some examples I had to use Google to translate from Latin into English. I’m not sure how accurate the translations are, so I’m including the original Latin sentences or phrases.

• 1558: "Polymathia, this is the discipline of many classes, which has now been published for the first time in favor of the studious". (Latin: "Polymathia hoc est disciplina multi iuga nune primum in studioforum gratiam aedita").

  

  These are the title and subtitle of a book published by Italian jurist Marcus Mantua Benavides in 1558. It is the earliest known evidence of a form of the word polymathy being used in writing. The book is almost three hundred pages long and seems to be written entirely in Latin. I haven’t found a translation of it, so I’m not sure what it is about, but it seems that polymathy was used to refer to knowledge of multiple academic areas.

  I’m not sure why Marcus Mantua Benavides (1489 - 1582) wrote the book. It doesn’t seem that he was a polymath, but he did have deep academic knowledge in at least one area: law. He was an unusually highly paid professor of canonical and penal law at the University of Padua, a collector of art and ancient documents, and a consultant to popes and to Holy Roman Empire emperors Carles V and Ferdinand I.

  Maybe it was his interest in the ancients that prompted him to write a book about polymathy. Or maybe it was his regular contact with many learned individuals. The University of Padua was more than three hundred years old by the time Benavides became a professor there; was renowned for its research in medicine, astronomy, philosophy, and law; and attracted many brilliant minds as students and teachers. Prussian polymath Nicolaus Copernicus studied canonical law there from 1501 to 1503, but there is no indication that Benavides had any particular interest in Copernicus or other polymaths of the time.

  Because I found very little information on Benavides, my ideas on why he wrote the book are mere speculations. I do plan, however, to learn Latin and translate his book, and that might give me more insight into his motivation and goal.

• 1603: “I am sure that if I had not engaged in poetry and the contemplation of nature, and all the more beautiful studies which comprise Polymathia, and had written less anxiously and fully about the natural arts themselves, no one will admit of negligence.” (Latin: “Quad uero de poetica et naturalium contemplatione, allisque amaenioribus studiis quae Polymathia complectitur non egerim et de ipsis ingenuis artibus minus anxie et plene perscripserim, nemo negligentiae dabit.”)

  

  This passage comes from German politician Johann von Wowern’s Treatise on Polymathy: A Fragment of a Comprehensive Work Dealing with the Ways to Study the Ancients. Von Wowern’s book also has what is considered the first formal definition of polymathy. In it, von Wowern writes that “perfect polymathy” is “knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies . . . ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them.”

  Von Wowern (1574-1612) was a politician, philologist, and lawyer. He was born in Germany but lived, for short amounts of time, in several places throughout Europe, including Paris, Florence, and Rome. He was very interested in old manuscripts and, at one point, was accused of stealing such manuscripts from St. Victor Monastery in Paris. In his late thirties, he became a minister responsible for secret and financial matters in the Schleswig (Germany) area. Because he raised taxes and was responsible for increasing prince Johann Adolf’s power, von Wowern was a hated public figure. In the second half of his life, he suffered for many years from various medical conditions, and, in one of his letters, wrote that “infected bladder, gout, an obstructed spleen, abdominal pains, heart flutter, coughing and, worst of all, crises of asthma... shake my ghost-like carcase.” He died a few weeks after turning thirty-eight.

  For von Wowern, the motives for writing Treatise on Polymathy seem to be his admiration of polymaths, his own quest to become a polymath, and his desire to clarify what perfect polymathy was. He was friends or corresponded with at least three polymaths of his time, Franco-Italian Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), Flemish Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), and French Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), and had deep admiration for at least one of them, namely Casaubon. In a letter he wrote the year he turned twenty-four, he said, “Casaubon is the most learned man of our times”; “he surpasses even those whom we formerly used to prefer to him. I also add that he is the most humane of beings, although he sticks to that golden rule according to which in the realm of learning there are always things that cannot be shared.” Casaubon himself had at least some admiration for von Wowern and called him an “extremely learned young man”.

  Librarian Luc Deitz, who wrote a paper I found very useful when researching von Wowern, said that Treatise on Polymathy is not just about perfect polymathy though, it is also about the “dangers and limitations of polymathy”. For example, in von Wowern’s words, “what we must try to avoid is the caricature of the polymath, the pernickety pedant, whose stale knowledge stifles learning and whose schoolmasterly manner discourages young men from scholarly pursuits mistaking as they do the professor for what he professes.”

  Whatever his motives for writing about it were, for von Wower polymathy was, as he referred to it, “great learning” and “manifold erudition”. In the 1665 Leipzig edition of Treatise on Polymathy, von Wowern’s polymath is represented as the Atlas of learning, who carries on his shoulders the whole globe of learning, which includes the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the disciplines of law, medicine, and theology.

• 1606: The word polumathes (a form of polymath) appears for the first time in writing, in the play Philosophaster written by English author Robert Burton between 1606 and 1615. The play was first performed in 1618 in Oxford, but published much later, in 1862, when the original manuscript, once thought to be long lost, was discovered and edited by William Edward Buckley, Oxford Professor and Church of England clergyman.
  

  

  Philosophaster is a satirical comedy in which a Spanish duke builds a new university and, in order to attract talented professors and students to it, offers high salaries to those willing to teach there. Unfortunately, the duke’s offer attracts not just talented individuals, but also charlatans or, as Burton calls them, philosophasters (pseudo-philosophers), who pretend to be learned and honest, but have no true academic knowledge and are only interested in money.

  The fake philosophers are eventually exposed by two true philosophers, Polumathes (“much learned”) and Philobiblos (“lover of books”), and the play ends with a wedding and an “hymn in praise of philosophy”.

  In the play, Polumathes represents deep knowledge of multiple disciplines, such as astronomy, etymology, geology, geometry, law, math, and physics; humility about how much the polymath knows; and awareness of how much he still needs to learn.

• 1624: Bewitched with this desire of fame, etiam mediis in morbis [even in the middle of disease], to the disparagement of their health, and scarce able to hold a pen, they must say something, and get themselves a name, says Scaliger, though it be to the down-fall and ruin of many others. To be counted writers, scriptores ut salutentur [writers to be paid respects to], to be thought and held Polumathes and Polihistors, apud imperitum vulgus ob ventosae nomen artis [among the ignorant, common people, because of vanity, in the name of art], to get a paper kingdom: nulla spe quaestus fed ampla famae [no hope of gaining a wide reputation], in this precipitate, ambitious age, nunc ut est saeculum, inter immaturam eruditionem, ambitiosum et praeceps [now, as the age is, among immature learning, ambitious and impetuous] (tis Scaliger’s censure) and they that are scarce auditors, vix auditores [hardly any listeners], must be masters and teachers, before they are capable and fit hearers. They will rush into all learning, togatam, armataem, [armed civilians] divine, humane authors, rake over all Indexes and Pamphlets for notes, as our merchants do strange havens for traffick, write great Tomes, Cum non fint re vera doctiores, sed loquaciores, [when they are not really more learned, but more eloquent] when they are not thereby better scholars but greater praters. They commonly pretend publike good, but as Gefner observes, this pride and vanity that eggs them on, no news or ought worthy of note, but the fame in other terms.”
  

  

  This passage comes from another work by English author Robert Burton’s, namely The Anatomy of Melancholy. According to Wikipedia and to Oxford Professor Kathryn Murphy, this is the first known use of a form of the word polymath in writing, and I’m not sure why that statement was made since Burton did use the word earlier, in his play Philosophaster.

  In Anatomy of Melancholy, polymathy seems to be an ideal that scholars of the day aspired to. They (the scholars) wanted to be respected writers and polymaths and, in that quest, sacrificed their health, rushed into all sorts of learning, and read pamphlets and indexes to uncover little known pieces of information, but, instead of trying to get true knowledge and understanding, they were only chasing fame. Burton sees these shallow scholars as mere “seekers of a paper kingdom”, rather than true polymaths.

  For Burton, an example of true polymath was Greek philosopher Democritus, who was “wholy addicted to his studies … A great Divine .. an expert Physician, a Politician, an excellent Mathematician … He was much delighted with the studies of Husbandry … He knew the natures, and differences of all Beasts, Plants, Fishes, Birds … In a word he was omnifariam doctus [he learned to do everything], a general Scholar, a great student.”

  Burton also writes about polymathy becoming increasingly difficult because too many books are being published. He sees the multitude of books both as a curse and as a blessing, For example, when writing about books he says “we are oppressed with them, our eye ache with reading, our fingers with turning”, but also that there are “many great libraries, full, well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates, and he is a very block that is affected with none of them.”

  The Anatomy of Melancholy is a long book, over half-a-million words long (almost two-thirds the length of the Bible), and has been called not just “a great book” by people like English writer Samuel Johnson and Irish novelist Samuel Beckett, but also as “my favorite book” and “the greatest book” by people such as English poet John Keats and English literary critic Nicholas Lezard.

  In the book, Burton says that melancholy affects all people, sometimes briefly, sometimes for long periods of time, and uses the topic of melancholy to talk about the human condition. The book has been described as lengthy and digressive, but also, surprisingly, as full of humor. One edition recommended by Burton scholar Professor Kathryn Murphy is the one edited by Angus Gowland and published in 2021.

• 1642: “That high and excellent learning which men, for the large extent of it, call polymathy.”

  

  This passage comes from Moravian polymath John Amos Comenius’s Reformation of Schooles, and it is the first known use of the word polymathy in writing.

  I went down several rabbit holes while doing research for this article, and I liked all of them, but, if I had to choose one as my favorite, then I would choose John Amos Comenius. I found several English translations of his work. Reading them gave me direct insight into his mindset and his work, and I liked what I found there.

  John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) is considered the father of modern education. He wrote some of the first illustrated textbooks for children, believed that children had a natural craving for learning and kindness and that learning was a lifelong process, emphasized that critical thinking was more valuable than memorization and that acquiring extensive knowledge could be made into a pleasure rather than a task, and came up with his own map or outline of knowledge as part of his effort of making a good education available to everyone.

  He was also one of the leaders of the pansophic movement of the seventeenth century. One guiding principle for the pansophic movement was to teach “all things, to all people, from all points of view.” I don’t know how in-depth Comenius wanted to teach all things to all people, but it seems that his goal was to make sure everyone had a basic understanding of the world and the foundations needed to become a polymath.

  I will study Comenius in depth and write more about him in a future article. Based on what I've read so far, for Comenius, a high quality universal education was critical to making sure the human race survives, and polymathy was an “excellent” form of learning.

• 1819: “Polymathy is frequently little more than a confused heap of useless erudition, occasionally detailed, either pertinently or impertinently, for parade. The genuine polymathy is an extensive erudition, or a knowledge of a great number of things, well digested, and applied to the purpose, and never but where they are necessary.”

  

  This passage comes from an encyclopedia entry on polymathy in Welsh minister Abraham Rees’s The Cyclopedia; Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature.

  Another passage from the same book is “Lipsius, Scaliger, Kircher, Petavius, Grotius, Salmasius, Leibnitz, &c. were famous for polymathy. Among the ancients, such as were eminent this way were called polyhistores.”

  Abraham Rees (1743-1825) is the person I spent least time researching for this project. I know very little about him, but I chose to quote his passages on polymathy because they explain the difference between pseudo-polymathy and genuine polymathy, and because they give examples of true polymaths.

These are just six examples of the historical uses of polymathy and polymath, and I have a few more that I left out to keep this article from getting too long. It’s a small sample and that’s not enough to form an accurate idea of what polymathy meant in the past, but it is enough to form an educated guess. I’ve started collecting these and similar examples, and I’m posting them in a publicly available google sheet about polymathy and on the Polymathy Lab website, but it will take a while to have a comprehensive collection and enough data for an accurate picture. Until then, my educated guess is that, in the past, polymathy did not have a clear connotation: it was used to praise but also to criticize; however, its general meaning was clear: polymathy meant extensive academic knowledge.

Current uses

That’s not the case anymore. Nowadays, while the word polymath is still being used to praise or to criticize, there is no single, general meaning for polymathy, and the main reason for that is that there is disagreement about what “many learnings” means. Points that are still debated are:

• How many is many? Is two many? Three? Four?
• What constitutes learning? Is it just the academic disciplines? Are trades, business, or sports learning?
• Is there a certain level of expertise one must reach in the field they are trying to learn?
• Is learning enough or does one also have to contribute to the field they are trying to learn?

Since these questions have no single answers yet, there are several circulating definitions of polymathy, and they fall into three main categories: high standards, ambiguous standards, and low standards.

• High standards. In this category, polymathy is defined as mastery of and contribution to at least three academic disciplines. Fields like the trades, business, or sports are acknowledged as domains of knowledge, but are not considered academic disciplines and, therefore, do not meet the criteria for polymathic learning.

  Historian Peter Burke wrote an entire book, The Polymath, A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag, based on this definition of polymathy and, in the book, briefly discusses five hundred polymaths who were experts in at least three academic disciplines and contributed to some of all of those disciplines. Burke’s list starts with Italian Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and goes in chronological order all the way to American Stephen Gould (1941-2002). I found Burke’s list very useful for my own research into polymathy, and I’m using it as a starting point for learning more about the lives and contributions of polymaths.

• Ambiguous standards. Based on entries I found for polymathy and polymath in several dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary, in the “ambiguous standards” category, polymathy is defined as “variety of learning”, “knowing a lot about many different things”, “knowledge of many arts and sciences”, “extensive or varied learning”, “accomplished scholarship”, or “acquaintance with many branches of knowledge”, but there is no clarity on the number or the type of fields that constitute learning.

  I don’t like this definition because it lacks clarity and because it doesn’t mention one important aspect of polymathy: using the acquired knowledge to produce something useful.

• Low standards. In this category, even beginner level knowledge of fields or even easily acquired skills constitute polymathic learning. For example, an online post in the magazine Vanity Fair called Serena Williams a polymath because she is a top tennis player, businesswoman, and certified nail technician; knows conversational French; and knows some words in Spanish and Italian.
  

  

  This is my least favorite definition. It makes it sound that even someone who is merely interested in multiple things is a polymath. That’s not what polymathy is though. Wide ranging curiosity is common to most humans and is critical to polymathy, but polymathy is more than interest or average knowledge. It is deep knowledge of several fields, academic fields specifically, and contribution to those fields. So, while Serena Williams’s accomplishments are impressive, they don’t make her a polymath.

  The same is true for other people who have been called polymaths in recent years, people such as Albert Einstein, who was called a polymath because, in addition to being an expert theoretical physicist, also played the violin and was interested in the philosophy of science, and like Bjork, who was called a polymath because she has an eclectic musical style and, in addition to being a singer, is a songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress.

  However, Einstein was not an expert in the philosophy of science and playing the violin does not qualify as academic knowledge, so, while Einstein was clearly an expert in theoretical physics, he wasn’t a polymath. And for Bjork, none of the things she is being praised for qualify as academic knowledge, which means she is an impressive artist, but not a polymath.

Examples of polymaths

If Bjork, Albert Einstein, and Serena Williams aren’t polymaths, who is? The list below has the names of fifteen traditional style polymaths, some long dead, some still alive, some well-known, some little-known, and some surprising. The stories of these polymaths support Peter Burke’s claim that history is unkind to polymaths since, if it remembers them at all, it usually remembers them for just one of the fields they excelled in and ignores the others.

Many of these polymaths lived when there was little or no distinction between academic disciplines, so the statements about what they excelled in are based on the writings they left behind and on other contributions. Since currently I know nothing or very little about these polymaths, I can’t rank their expertise in each area, so I’ll list in alphabetical order their areas of expertise.

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) (Italian) is the epitome of polymathy. The fields he excelled in include anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, engineering, hydrodynamics, metallurgy, optics, painting, and sculpting. Some of his contributions are well-known, such as the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man, and some are less-known, such as musical instruments, devices used to automate manufacturing, weapons, and movable barricades to protect the city of Venice from invasions. Some of the things he thought of didn’t not seem possible in his time and were only built hundreds of years after his death (e.g. flying machines and parachutes).
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) (German-Polish) excelled in astronomy, the classics, economics, law, medicine, and theology. He is best known for creating a new model of the universe in which the Sun rather than the Earth is at the center.
• René Descartes (1596–1650) (French) excelled in astronomy, geometry, medicine, music, philosophy, and optics. He has been called the father of modern philosophy and the father of analytic geometry. The Cartesian coordinate system is named after him.
• Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) (French) excelled in mathematics, philosophy, physics, and theology. He was also an inventor, and his inventions include a hydraulic press and a syringe. Pascal’s wager and Pascal’s triangle are named after him.
• Isaac Newton (1643–1727) (English) excelled in alchemy, astronomy, mathematics, natural philosophy, physics, and theology. He established classical mechanics and, together with German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, is considered the father of calculus.

• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) excelled at chemistry, diplomacy, history, languages, law, mathematics, natural history, philosophy, and physics.
• Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694–1778) (French) excelled at history, natural history, philosophy, and writing. He was a prolific writer. His best-known work is the satire Candide in which he ridicules, among others, polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for his claim that our world is the “best of all possible worlds.”
• Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) (American) excelled in meteorology, politics, and writing. He was an inventor, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His inventions include the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove.
• Adam Smith (1723–1790) (Scottish) excelled in economics, law, philosophy, political economy, rhetoric, and theology. He wrote The Wealth of Nations and is considered the father of economics.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) (German) excelled in anatomy, botany, chemistry, geology, physics, politics, and writing. He is considered the greatest German writer. His best known drama is Faust.

• Charles Darwin (1809–1882) (English) excelled in biology, botany, geology, paleontology, and philosophy. He is best known for his theory of natural selection.
• Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) (Swiss) excelled in medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. He was a prolific writer and is the founder of analytical psychology.
• Alan Turing (1912–1954) (English) excelled in theoretical biology, computer science, cryptanalysis, engineering, mathematics, and philosophy. He created the Turing machine, helped decipher the code of the Enigma machines Germans used during World War II, and is considered the father of theoretical computer science.
• Jared Diamond (1937- ) (American) excels in anthropology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, ecology, geography, and physiology. He wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book recommended by many public figures, such as investors Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, and is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
• Nathan Myhrvold (1959- ) excels in astronomy, climate science, mathematics, mathematical economics, paleontology, and physics. He was Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft for four years and is now an inventor, businessman, and author of award-winning cookbooks.

This is just a small sample from a list of more than six hundred polymaths I compiled from several sources. A messy version of the list is available in a public Google Sheets workbook I use to organize my research about polymaths, and a polished version is available on the Polymathy Lab website.

Conclusion

After looking at the history of polymathy and comparing who was called a polymath in the past and who is called a polymath today, it is clear that two main things have changed about polymathy:

1. The areas of polymathy have expanded to include non-academic areas such as sports and singing.
2. The standards of polymathy have been lowered, and now even basic knowledge of a field or curiosity about a field are considered enough to contribute to someone being called a polymath.

In the past, the term polymath was applied to people like Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin. Today, the term polymath is applied to Serena Williams and Bjork, but also to people who are curious about multiple areas, academic or not, and have no deep knowledge of nor any remarkable achievement in these areas.

I don’t know if the definition of polymathy will continue to change, but I do know that, to be true to what the word meant when it first started being used and to be true to its spirit, polymathy should remain mastery of at least three academic fields and contribution in the form of new knowledge or new technology.

That is the definition I have adopted when setting my own standards and when writing and talking about polymathy.