Illinois Wesleyan University


Packing for College

by Minor Myers, jr.
Illinois Wesleyan University
From the May 2003 edition of the NCSSSMST Journal
(published by the National Consortium of Specialized Schools of Mathematics, Science & Technology)

Students heading to college may hesitate with a question: Does my future lie in narrowing my focus to one subject, or in maintaining the multiple interests which have been so rewarding through school? Sadly, narrowness often wins, and the violin or flute is left at home as the student heads off for four focused years of serious physics or history. There’s another view.

Leonardo may have more to do with the average NCSSSMST student than is usually guessed. Not just a Renaissance icon, he and thousands like him are models of polymath creativity. In studying polymaths for the past decade, I have found their creativity inescapable. In fact, the pattern is so constant that I found I could take virtually any roster of the creative from a book on the subject, and of the hundreds mentioned in any study usually 30-to-45% were clearly polymaths.

I take a polymath to be someone who achieves or approaches expertise or creativity in two or more separate fields. Consistent activity in music or art works here, too, even though no recording company or gallery comes beckoning. I include the phrase "or creativity" very consciously. Howard Gardner’s studies of expertise have gained wide national following. There is nothing unusual about expertise, he says; in fact it’s really common. Ten years of focused study produces expertise in almost any field, whether law, science, music, or carpentry. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has become equally familiar for his serious studies of creativity and satisfaction. For him, as for many who write about creativity, the new, creative act usually follows the pattern of an expert in any field developing a pattern later acclaimed as an improvement. Polymaths are often different. Very confident of themselves, they have no hesitation about creating long before expertise is even a question. Thus Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, Gypsy Rose Lee, and John Philip Sousa make the list of novelists, even though they each wrote only one. Likewise, photographer-poet Gordon Parks had the unusual problem that he had composed a piano concerto without any idea of how to do orchestral parts.

The polymath’s extra ability seems clear if you study any long shelf of books on creativity. Subtleties and terminology vary, but the simplistic message underneath seems constant: creativity comes from mastering a field and then thinking as though you were in another field. Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo makes the point with its title.

There has been a recent trend to multiple majors, as students have thought they will make themselves more interesting for employers. They are not necessarily interested in these subjects, just qualifying for jobs. Some liberal arts colleges are actively discouraging this pattern, which is far different from real polymath propensities. The polymath pursues multiple things because they are part of a psyche; they reflect interests that will not quit; they are almost interests to be resisted rather than promoted. In this sense, the polymath double major is far different from the job qualifier. The double major seeking a job operates from a cold technique, while the polymath may pursue the same subjects with deep, live interest. It is a pattern which makes a great difference for creative potential.

Most creativity books are written for people who do one thing, usually with some expertise. They are urged to think from a different perspective, or to give the trite phrase a visual usefulness, they are urged to think outside the box of their own expertise.

Because the polymath lives in two or more boxes, the polymath is constantly approaching any box from the perspective of another. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the creative potential of the polymath varies with the square of focused interests, at least up to a point. The physicist-musician can think either about music or physics, but with equal ease one can think of the influence of physics on music or music on physics, which makes four foci from two interests.

Leonardo had but one rival in seeming to do everything among his near contemporaries. Leon Baptista Alberti was a musician, artist, mathematician, poet, lawyer, writer who worked for the Vatican. Just a few aspects of his life make an easy illustration of the creative process among polymaths. After training in law and surveying, he actually seems to have supervised property management for the church. He seems to have loved doing the surveying himself, and in the process he developed new, mathematical ways of making maps more accurate than those in general use.

He was a practiced surveyor when art caught his attention. Artists wrestle with perspective. How can a painter render a row of receding columns convincingly? Alberti knew he could be a better artist by thinking like a surveyor, and he used a combination of his surveying instruments and triangulation to develop his theory of perspective. When his manuscript began circulating (Gutenberg was still in the future), the surveyor had produced the first modern book on painting.

But Alberti was also interested in sculpture. Again, he simply used old interests to give a creative dimension to new pursuits. He concluded that the ideal sculpture should mirror the ideal proportions of humans mixed with the specific traits of individuals. To master this he adapted his surveying equipment anew. The measuring device placed over the subject’s head allowed detailed, three-dimensional measurements, a method he described in the first book on sculpture in modern times.

A few years later he turned toward gunnery. Few would have thought a poet-artist a likely guide for aiming cannons, but Alberti realized the task was one of physics and geometry more than military courage. Still another adaptation of surveying equipment soon gave gunners a reliable means of hitting targets.

Alberti set the model for polymaths, applying ideas very common in one field to other areas where they were unknown. Thinking by such analogies is altogether natural for the polymath, yet often comes as a heroic achievement for others who deliberately confine their purview to one field.

In a culture haunted by the maxim "Jack of all trades, master of none," students often think that a second interest must detract from what they take to be a primary focus. Admittedly some employers think so too, yet the evidence is undeniable that multiple interests and creativity are linked.

As I read creativity books, the roster of creative examples sounded like a replication of my accumulated list of the multi-talented. I began counting, and I discovered many times that a solid 30-to- 45% of these lists were polymaths. The data are often elusive, as even biographers come to think of their subjects as specialists in single fields. One biography of former Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen said nothing about his book on Greek architecture.

Many doubt that people can do multiple things well. As a culture we believe that excellence comes with focus, and focus requires an exclusive commitment. Yet there are thousands of inspiring people who have done, and who continue to do, multiple things well. Polymaths often train in one field and pursue another completely on their own, but Albert Schweitzer remains a recent, and phenomenal, example. At age 18 he decided to narrow his focus to three things: philosophy, theology, and music. He would ultimately have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in both theology and philosophy. At age 29 he was a minister who was assistant at one church while he was also head of a theology school. He had written a synthesis of 67 biographies in his Quest for the Historical Jesus. In music he studied organ with Charles Marie Widor at Notre Dame, one of the greatest organists of the era. Widor had persuaded him to write a biography of Bach, and when Schweitzer did his own German translation of the original French version, the volume doubled in size. And Widor and Schweitzer together were producing a new edition of Bach’s organ works. In addition to everything else, Schweitzer was playing many recitals as well as consulting on historical organ design. Amidst all this at age 29, Schweitzer decided that his real calling was medicine, and dropping only his leadership of theology school, he started medical school and soon thereafter opened the clinic in Africa which brought him international fame.

The rest of his life was a mix of medicine, concerts, recordings, books and lectures on philosophy, theology, and peace, the Nobel Peace Prize, and bouts of intermittent exhaustion. Certified as a professional expert in four fields (philosophy, theology, music, and medicine), Schweitzer probably defines the modern limits of possibility.

As his friends surely knew, the polymath agenda grows from within. Continuing life-long breadth does not come from external motivators, liberal arts lectures, or the desire to impress potential employers. Rather, real intellectual passions play themselves out in patterns of absorbing delight, which give an ongoing edge in creativity. I am convinced that the polymath passion can’t be faked, but it can be squelched by well meaning advice. The overall advice for NCSSSMST students going off to college: if there’s room in the mind for the violin, there will be no problem finding room for it in the car or the day.

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