Polymathy Lab

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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.

Entry in an 1819 encyclopedia edited by Welsh minister Abraham Rees (1743-1825)

What is polymathy?

Polymathy is the mastery of at least three academic disciplines and contribution to at least one discipline or area of life. There are several circulating definitions of polymathy, and this one has the highest standards for what it means to be a polymath. It is the definition I use as part of my plan of becoming a polymath, and the definition I use when determining if someone is a polymath I want to include in the Polymathy Lab project.

I wrote a longer article on what polymathy is and why there is confusion around the meaning of this word, and you can read it here or can watch the YouTube video here.

What are some examples of polymaths?

The most famous polymaths are Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, but there are hundreds of other people for whom there is evidence they were polymaths and who are little known, and, undoubtedly, there are many more who have not been discovered yet or who are not talked about.

Historian and author Peter Burke gives, in his book The Polymath, A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag, the most extensive list of polymaths I have found to date. Burke’s list has five hundred names, starts with Italian Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), and goes in chronological order all the way to American Stephen Gould (1941-2002).

To create my own list, I’m using Burke’s list as a starting point and adding to it other names I come across. I will research the people on this list, learn about their lives and contributions, and write short biographies about them.

I am posting the messy version of this list with my research notes on it in this publicly available Google Sheet and the polished version of the list on the Polymathy Lab website, under the Polymaths tab.

Is it still possible to become a polymath?

Yes, it is still possible to become a polymath. Living polymaths I know of include Jared Diamond (b.1937), Raymond Tallis (b. 1946), and Nathan Myhrvold (b. 1959), and they are proof that polymathy is still possible.