The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility

by Waqas Ahmed

  Curiosity and intelligence are important traits for the polymath, but each of these can be steered either horizontally (broad enquiry) or vertically (toward specialisation). Today’s hyper-specialised society clearly encourages the latter, so for the aspiring polymath, what must be added to these tools of self-development is versatility.

  Versatility is the fundamental feature or ‘core competency’ of the polymathic mind — it is what distinguishes the polymath from other types of geniuses. Versatility is not always synonymous with the polymath, but — unlike other polymathic attributes such as creativity, general intelligence and critical thinking — it is an essential prerequisite and necessary component of it. Coming from the Latin versatilis, it is literally translated as ‘turning easily,’ but defined in English as being ‘capable of doing many things competently’ or ‘having varied uses or many functions.’ Put simply, it is the ability to move seamlessly between various, seemingly unrelated domains.

  Today, versatility is a skill most spoken of in the realms of music, film and sport, but it is of course demonstrated in every sphere of human life. It is a trait innate in humans and indeed one that can be traced back to our (widely considered) common ancestors. By inventing methods of cleaning sweet potatoes as well as sorting grains, Imo, the Capuchin monkey of the 1950s, demonstrated to primatologists that apes have multiple, distinct cognitive abilities that they are able to shift between effectively.

  Switching Lives

  Man is a living creature of varied, multiform and ever-changing nature.

  — Mesopotamian saying

  (from Oration on the Dignity of Man)

  Cheng Man-ch’ing played one of greatest roles in introducing Chinese culture to the West in the twentieth century. He was known as the ‘Master of the Five Arts’ for his accomplishments in martial arts, medicine, painting, poetry and calligraphy. He became a recognised physician early on in his career, practicing independently at first, and then ultimately becoming personal physician to the Chinese statesman Chiang Kai-shek while in Taiwan. He was well versed in both traditional Chinese herbal medicine, as well as in Western pharmacology.

  Throughout his career, ‘Professor Cheng’ as he became known, also excelled in various art forms, particularly the ‘Three Perfections’ (painting, poetry and calligraphy), following the ancient Chinese tradition of the san chueh. His first poems were published at the age of 18, and at 19 he became professor of poetry at Yu-Wen University. He initially started painting as a source of income and then after much study under the great masters of his time, he was appointed head of the Shanghai School of Fine Arts where he taught painting and calligraphy (his students later included the wife of Chinese Premier Chiang Kai-shek). His work was exhibited in Paris and New York as well as throughout China, and he became a founder of the College for Chinese Arts and Culture.

  He is perhaps best known in the West for popularising ta’i chi — the traditional Chinese martial art known for both its physical, psychological and spiritual benefits. He studied, practiced, taught and wrote on ta’i chi, and pioneered the popular Yang-style form. He was also a mystic and philosopher, whose commentary on Chinese classical texts such as the Tao Te Ching, I Ching and the Analects of Confucius was compiled into a philosophical treatise: Essays on Man and Culture.

  In doing much of the above simultaneously; Cheng was clearly a master of the art of versatility. This skill, which today has become a fashionable competency, sought after by many of the world’s employers, necessitates a certain mind-set. Whether consciously or naturally, an individual must possess an openness to — and indeed sometimes a craving for — continuous change. But perhaps more important is an acceptance of the inevitability of change in general, not dissimilar to the way the Buddhist subscribes to the outlook of anatta (impermanence), which views the world and its objects as part of a dynamic system in which everything is temporary and perishable.

  Of course ‘change’ is not a metaphysical concept but indeed a physical reality. Every four months your red blood cells are replaced entirely, and your skin’s cells are replaced every few weeks. Within about seven years every atom in your body will be replaced by other atoms. Physically, you are constantly a new you. If change is accepted as a reality of life and moreover embraced as such, one is more likely to move onto, or switch between, different spheres and phases of life with relative ease.

  With change comes variety. ‘If you’re not specialised it gives a lot more freedom to the mind . . . you’re not putting constraints on yourself, which means that you can move much more quickly and fluidly,’ says artistic polymath Billy Childish, who, like a lot of people, needs constant stimulation. The individual sometimes simply finds value and gratification in having lived multiple ‘lives’ which he or she (consciously or subconsciously) treats as entirely separate from one another. Fulfilment is attained by having lived alternative lives and assumed multiple identities (whether concurrently or sequentially); having lived your fantasies instead of just dreaming them. There need not be an interdisciplinary agenda — connections between fields don’t have to be seen or made — each ‘life’ or ‘facet’ is sufficiently worthy in its own right, in isolation. ‘[Polymathy] is acknowledging that you can’t bring everything under one umbrella,’ says Gayathri Spivak, ‘you have to juggle; it’s like magic, like dancing. Like an adventure.’

  Crockett and Ibrahim compartmentalise their various projects; switching effectively between them on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. While the act of switching constantly between different worlds can prove to be an excitingly rewarding lifestyle, it can also have the effect of psychological rejuvenation. Some, for example, use this switch between lives as an alternative method of recovery. When asked if or when he actually takes a break from his endless list of projects, Tim Ferriss responded by saying, ‘I recover best when I switch my focus; so instead of doing nothing I’ll focus on something completely unrelated to what I had been focused on.’ It is the same concept behind a circuit training workout — the full hour, rest-free, full-body exercise session which is devised in a way that allows different body parts to rest a short while, while other parts are working. ‘A change is as good as a rest,’ so the saying goes.

  This prospect of ‘escaping,’ albeit temporarily or intermittently, one aspect of your life in order to enter another can thus have a refreshing effect on an individual, often allowing for greater overall satisfaction and productivity. Seen this way, switching can be used to overcome perhaps the biggest problem with the monomathic, specialised life: diminishing returns. David Eastburn famously explained this in his lecture to the American Philosophical Society: ‘as you pursue a certain activity, the added satisfaction eventually diminishes. At some point you get more additional satisfaction from doing something different.’ As an economist, he was referring to the concept of marginal utility and the plateau effect, which not only applies to economies and organisations, but also individuals.

  ‘The trick,’ Eastburn suggests, ‘is to maximize total satisfaction through a mix of activities.’ This is why some individuals, according to Tim Ferriss, ‘take the condensed study up to, but not beyond, the point of rapidly diminishing returns.’ He argues that ‘there is perhaps a 5 percent comprehension difference between the focused generalist who studies Japanese systematically for two years versus the specialist who studies Japanese for 10, with the lack of urgency typical of those who claim that something “takes a lifetime to learn’.” This is commonly referred to as the 80/20 principle.

  Azeri polymath Hamlet Isakhanli feels that it is healthy for the mind to switch between matters of necessity and passion: ‘It is possible to change one’s activity from time to time, to pull some desire from the depths of one’s heart and bring it to life.’ So jumping between unrelated tasks prevents the prospect of diminishing returns that come from tunnel-visioned continuity. It allows for a frequent injection of originality, which would come either from insights received from another field/task or just simply f
rom the ‘freshness’ of not having over-worked in one field. To use another fitness training analogy, after a progressive programme of, say, running or bench-pressing, it is important to ‘shock’ the body with a totally different exercise after a certain point to overcome the ‘block’ and boost performance. Many writers have also used this method to overcome writer’s block.

  Such ‘multi-tasking’ by the versatile individual keeps them optimally and continuously alert, thereby enhancing overall performance. A recent Cass Business School study published in the Harvard Business Review argues the case for multitasking, and found that ‘polychronic executives’ (multi-taskers) are superior information brokers, faster decision-makers and actually have a higher financial performance than their other colleagues. When asked why they multi-task, one of executives explained: ‘we enjoy the variety; that constant switching, the challenge of needing to concentrate harder.’

  Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED Conferences, agrees that ‘switching’ is an important intellectual method. When advising on the most effective way to explore ideas, during his own TED Talk, he explained the importance of refreshing and expanding the brain through variety. In fact he attributes the success of TED to this feature:

  Keep varying between subjects . . . don’t have too many talks that go to the same part of the brain. Think of the brain as a muscle . . . if you have too much analytical or too much inspirational etc., that part of the brain gets exhausted . . . the reason why TED works is that you mix it up. . . . Have some musical, some visual, some inspirational, some analytical etc. This makes the brain open up. . .

  Bruce Lee died at 32, but had by then earned worldwide fame as a genius martial artist and actor. But there was much more to the man. He was a deep thinker and poet. He had a philosophy of versatility, which was the essence of Kung Fu. ‘You must be shapeless, formless, like water,’ he insisted. ‘When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash . . . Become like water, my friend!’ Perhaps it was this method that allowed him to rally with a Chinese ping-pong champion using nunchucks as a paddle!

  Philosophically, with each switch, the polymath undergoes something of an epistemological shift between different ‘forms of knowing and being.’ Scientifically, this can be explained through cognitive and neural processes.

  Cognitive Shifting and Neuroplasticity

  James Cook (the famous ‘Captain Cook’) was commissioned by the Royal Society in the eighteenth century to make the first voyage to the South Pacific. His team were to observe the eclipse of the Sun by Venus, but of course, the hidden agenda was a colonial one: to find and lay claim to the fabled southern continent. Aware that Polynesians were historically the best seafaring navigators of the Southern Pacific, Cook recruited a local polymath to assist him on matters of navigation, meteorology, language, culture, cartography and astronomy.

  Tupaia was a Tahitian linguist, orator, priest and politician who had no previous knowledge of writing or mapmaking, but ended up drawing a chart of the Pacific that encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 4000 km from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji. He was also the ship’s translator, able to communicate with the Maori, Javanese and Tahitians, and also a talented artist, drawing lively pictures to illustrate what he described. An important source of information on the peoples and cultures of the South Pacific, he has also been described by his biographer as the ‘Pacific’s first anthropologist.’

  Tupaia clearly had an extraordinary talent for ‘code-switching’ — the effective shifting between different types of knowledge, skills and environments. It is a type of cognitive ability commonly associated with linguists who must switch frequently between multiple languages, with actors who move in and out of various characters, or with individuals who have multiple social and cultural identities and must adjust their mode of thinking and being according to where they are and with whom they communicate. The act of switching between multiple program windows, browser tabs and documents on a computer is perhaps a microcosm of this concept. Or perhaps a better analogy for the twenty-first century might be augmented reality.

  Cognitive shifting is a process encouraged and undergone in many meditative traditions, and one increasingly studied by psychologists and neuroscientists in order to better understand the mind’s ability to switch between unrelated tasks. It is a component of the brain’s executive function: specific brain regions that are activated when a person switches between multiple unrelated tasks, including the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, anterior cingulate cortex and posterior parietal cortex. These areas are collectively responsible for the polymath’s ability to move freely from one situation or cognitive skill to another and to think flexibly and respond appropriately to a changed situation by effectively re-directing their focus.

  Our brains are biologically programmed to be able to deal with constant change. Our neurons and their synapses are in a constant state of flux — the connections are dynamic, changing their size and strength and location; being formed and unformed. This process, known as neuroplasticity, is when our neurons and neural networks change their connections and behaviour in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage or dysfunction. Rapid change or reorganisation of the brain’s cellular or neural networks can take place during times of significant change.

  As we gain new experiences, frequently used synapses (a structure that permits one neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another) are strengthened while unused synapses weaken. Eventually, unused synapses are eliminated completely in a process known as synaptic pruning, which leaves behind efficient networks of neural connections. This process is most active during childhood development and physical injury, but it remains as a reaction mechanism for new information or to adjust to new circumstances over the course of our entire lives. So neuroscientist David Eagleman reminds us that change is not something that ought to be difficult for us, as it is happening automatically and constantly, inside our brains:

  Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewiring is own circuitry, and because your experiences are so unique so are the vast, decoded patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint . . . we’re not fixed. From cradle to grave, we are works in progress.

  As Oxford neuroscientist Anders Sandberg says, even the most rigid persons have a frontal lobe that allows them to change their mind, ‘. . . one of the coolest yet most frightening things about humans is that you can change their life by just telling them a sentence . . . that doesn’t work with cats!’

  As science writer Leonard Mlodinow stated in his recent book Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change, thinking methods that nurture versatility, adaptability, openness and resilience — that is, ‘elastic thinking’ — are what will allow us to thrive in this period of accelerating change that is transforming practically every aspect of 21st-century life.

  Multifacetedness

  Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

  — Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

  Matrakci Nasuh joined the Ottoman Navy in the sixteenth century and quickly gained recognition for his prodigious swordsmanship. He would go on to become one of the foremost warriors of the Empire, as well as a weapons instructor, master bladesmith, a writer on combat training (Tuhfet-ül Guzât) and inventor of a martial sport called Matrak (hence his name).

  But martial arts was merely one of his multiple facets. Firstly, Nasuh was also a mathematical scholar whose work on geometry including Cemâlü’l-Küttâb and Kemalü’l-Hisâb were highly acclaimed by the Sultan Selim — he even invented multiplication methods (shown in his Umdet-ul Hisab) that were previously only credited to European Renaissance schola
rs. What’s more, Nasuh was also a renowned painter and miniaturist, and his distinct ‘Matrakci style’ of detailed cityscapes and epic battle scenes are still on show in Turkey’s prestigious galleries and museums today.

  Nasuh also proved himself to be one of the pre-eminent historians of his time, producing masterpieces such as Mecmaü’t-Tevârih and Suleymannâme covering the period from 1520 to 1543, as well as a treatise on Suleiman’s Iran campaign titled Fetihname-i Karabuǧdan. As a soldier, martial artist, polyglot, painter, mathematician and historian, he exhibited his many facets: intellectual, physical and creative.

  Like many polymaths over history, Nasuh was able to use his position as a trusted courtier to employ his many facets. But the demonstration of versatility ought not only to apply to professional or intellectual life, but to life as a whole. Indeed, factors and considerations contribute to the development of an individual’s well-roundedness: the diversity of travel, exposure to languages and cultures, moments experienced, relationships had, emotions felt, conversations made, thinking done, books or articles read, qualifications earned, contributions made and so on. This makes real polymathy an interestingly complex and deep notion, of which true measurement is near impossible.