The word polymathy has been around since at least 1558 and, throughout history, has been used both in a positive way, to express admiration for people who know many things deeply and contribute new knowledge, and in a negative way, to express contempt for people who merely collect large amounts of varied facts without putting any thought into how useful or how significant those facts are and without contributing new knowledge.
Now, several hundred years later, the word is still being used both in a positive and a negative way, and there still is debate on whether polymathy is a good thing or not. However, unlike the past, there is more confusion about what polymathy actually is, and there are two main reasons for this: read more