The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility

by Waqas Ahmed

  There are many examples. Anatomist Ronald Ross was also a notable novelist, playwright, poet and painter; physicist Murray Gell-Mann is also an authority on the history of languages, the psychology of creative thinking, ornithology and archaeology. This implies that artistic avocation can have an effect on general intelligence. In fact, so-called specialists like Einstein, have gone as far as suggesting that their other interests actually play an important role in contributing to and enhancing their work in their primary field. ‘I often think in music . . .’ he is recorded saying.

  Many scientific polymaths have used art to contribute toward their understanding of various branches of science. Ismail al-Jazari, the prolific twelfth-century inventor and engineer, produced beautiful miniatures of his designs, using art as a tool of both investigation and presentation in his famous notebooks which some say inspired Leonardo da Vinci. The eighteenth-century English scientist Erasmus Darwin, a physician, botanist, biologist, cosmologist and engineer, famously used poetry to articulate his ponderings on nature. Bengali scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose excelled as a biologist, physicist and botanist and then used storytelling as a means for scientific exploration, and in doing so became one of the fathers of modern science fiction. Austrian scientist Ernst Haeckel, a physician, zoologist, biologist and philosopher of science, expressed his appreciation of nature through a series of beautiful paintings and drawings. Similarly, Afro-American George Washington Carver — referred to by Time magazine in 1941 as ‘the Black Leonardo’ for his numerous agricultural inventions including plastics, paints, dyes and gasoline — enhanced his understanding of botany through his earlier career as a plant painter. Spanish neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal is equally known for his breathtaking drawings of neurons. American Samuel Morse was an inventor and painter in equal measure. The list goes on.

  Likewise, many artists have used scientific concepts to produce artistic masterpieces. Jazz musician John Coltrane’s mathematical ‘Tone Circle’ model is a fine example. Salvador Dali used his intricate knowledge of Freudian psychoanalysis and Einsteinian atomic physics to produce exceptional paintings such as The Great Masturbator and Galatea of the Spheres. Desmond Morris, another important figure in modern surrealist painting, used his expertise in zoology to inform his highly acclaimed artwork. ‘If my paintings do nothing else, they will serve to demonstrate that such titles (“science” and “art”) are misleading,’ he says. ‘Painting is not merely a craft, it is a form of personal research. . . . In reality people today are not scientists or artists . . . they are explorers or non-explorers, and the context of their explorations are of secondary importance.’

  Art historian Kenneth Clarke noted that both art and science essentially emerge from the same imaginative sources: ‘Art and science . . . are not, as used to be supposed, two contrary activities, but in fact draw on many of the same capacities of the human mind. In the last resort, each depends on the imagination. Artist and scientist alike are both trying to give concrete form to dimly apprehended ideas.’ This is confirmed by a recent psychological study, which concludes: ‘scientists and artists often describe their creative work habits in the same ways, using the same language, and draw on common, transdisciplinary mental toolkits that include observing, imaging, abstracting, patterning, body thinking, empathizing and so forth.’

  The need to bring art and science back together since the disciplinary and professional compartmentalisation of the industrial revolution was, as mentioned before, highlighted famously by scientist-novelist C.P. Snow in his 1959 ‘The Two Cultures’ lectures, which warned against unhealthy divergence of art (including the humanities) and science. In 1990, artist-inventor-psychologist Todd Siler coined the term ‘ArtScience’ in recognition of the interconnections between the two worlds, although the term nor the concept never fully took off. More recently, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, one of the world’s most creative and influential organisations, asserted that this connection must be reignited in order to foster technological innovation in the modern world. ‘We need to bring art and science back together,’ he said in a recent speech to British technologists. ‘Think back to the glory days of the Victorian era. It was a time when the same people wrote poetry and built bridges.’

  Brain Chemistry

  Jeong Yak-yong, an eighteenth-century government aide to King Jeongio of Korea, served as a civil engineer (he designed the Hwaseong Fortress in modern Suwon) and then as special envoy to the Gyeonggi provinces. He was also a prodigious poet who began writing as early as nine, and whose poetry played a key role in the nineteenth-century tea revival. But following the new regime which persecuted the Catholics, Yak-yong was forced into exile. There, he is said to have written 500 volumes on subjects ranging from politics, philosophy and economy, to natural sciences, medicine and music. After his return from exile, he published his most important works on jurisprudence (Heumheumsinseo), linguistics (Aeongakbi), diplomacy (Sadekoryesanbo), the art of governance (Mongminsimseo), and administration (Gyeongsesiryeong). His ability to reinvent himself at different points in his life and during different circumstances shows us that Yak-tong’s brain had a remarkable ‘plasticity.’

  There are approximately one hundred billion neurons in the brain, each with a thousand synapses, and each interacting with each other in an almost infinite amount of ways (some estimate the number of interconnections to be around one hundred trillion!). This not only demonstrates the sheer capacity of human thought but also its interminable variety. British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explains the endless interconnectivity of the brain:

  The brain is a single, integrated, highly dynamic system. Events anywhere in the brain are connected to, and potentially have consequences for, other regions, which may respond to, propagate, enhance or develop that initial event, or alternatively redress it in some way, inhibit it, or strive to re-establish equilibrium. There are no ‘bits,’ only networks, an almost infinite array of pathways.

  If we started to count these interconnections at the rate of one per second you would still be counting thirty million years from now, and if they were to be unravelled, the strand would be long enough to encircle the Earth twice! Such is the infiniteness of our modes of thought.

  As well as interconnectivity, our brains (as described earlier) also have plasticity; the latter not only explains versatility, but also hybridity. Brain chemistry and structure are physically altered by experience through plasticity — the brain is not a fixed mass that shapes behaviour; behaviour also shapes the brain. Most of our past experiences have been lost to our conscious memory, but those experiences continue to shape our lives in ways that contemporary cognitive science tries to understand. The diversity of our experiences does therefore shape who we are — we become the product of our experiences and the knowledge we accumulate, perhaps just as the Hindu believes in the concept of karma (while the latter refers to a system of multiple lifetimes, the concept is just as applicable to a single life). Michael O’Shea, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, confirms this:

  Neurons are not joined together with the biological equivalent of solder joints in an electronic circuit. The joints are not fixed but fluctuate in strength in accordance with experience. In this way behaviour is adapted continuously according to the latest experiences in our ever-changing surroundings.

  This process, referred to by neuroscientists as neural plasticity, has profound implications for polymathy. ‘It may well be a mistake to do just one thing,’ says Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. ‘If you practice multiple things you actually get better at any one of those things.’ Pursuing a particular intellectual discipline, professional career, hobby or even just having a particular experience, he implies, will not just have a definite impact on the pursuit or involvement of something completely different, but that impact, moreover, it is likely to be beneficial. When a person switches to pursue a field different from the previous one, his neur
ons form new pathways between previously isolated regions. The more varied our skills, that is, the more varied the neural pathways in use.

  Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect, says that our mind ‘is a place where different cultures, domains, and disciplines stream together toward a single point. They connect, allowing for established concepts to clash and combine, ultimately forming a multitude of new, groundbreaking ideas.’ Modern research has demonstrated that the brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones in order to adapt to new experiences, learn new information and create new memories. According to neuroscientist Donald Seuss, ‘The brain reorganizes. Different regions can take over and it can use different pathways, different networks to perform the same tasks. So the potential is there.’ As we get older, there is a common tendency to reinforce what we already know instead of trying new things that will challenge our brains.

  Creativity, it seems, fosters polymathy, and vice versa. ‘Polymathy supports creativity,’ says cognitive psychologist Rand Spiro, ‘because creativity requires ideas, analogies, patterns and perspectives from outside the domain you are working on.’ This brings us back to the right-left brain dichotomy. Many neuroscientists attribute creativity to the interior superior temporal gyms. During a creative moment, the left hemisphere barely reacts but the right becomes more active, showing a striking increase in gamma waves. Brain cells on the left hemisphere have short dendrites, useful for pulling in information from nearby, but the cells on the right branch out much further and pull together distant unrelated ideas.

  Further revelations about the brain’s remarkable intellectual and creative potential come from the altered states of consciousness and unleashing of genius that seem to result from neurological conditions, spiritual experiences, psychedelic drugs and cognitive enhancers (‘smart drugs’). Cases of sudden savant syndrome and Ayahuascan art remind us of the possibilities, but often just having a well-considered education can have a transformational impact on the mind.

  Unity

  I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.

  — Gottfried Leibniz

  The Bigger Picture

  Going a step further than the idea that there are connections between some fields is to suggest that all fields are inextricably connected — as demonstrated by Aristotle’s ‘Tree of Life’ and more recently Fritjof Capra’s ‘Web of Life.’ A.J. Jacobs, editor of Esquire, who as a part of one of his ‘lifestyle experiments’ chose to read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, concluded that: ‘everything is connected like a worldwide version of the six-degrees-of-separation game.’ Edwin Hubble recognised that the perception and segmentation of knowledge is simply a manmade process, whereas reality is actually one unified whole. ‘Equipped with his five senses,’ he said, ‘man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.’

  This human obsession with the compartmentalisation and branding of fields and disciplines — fuelled in part by the ‘information explosion’ — is a relatively recent adoption by society and thus by the human mind. Before the European Enlightenment, disciplinary boundaries were not rigidly fixed and it was therefore easier to pursue multiple fields of study without the ‘dangers of straying.’ In fact there was no such notion as ‘straying’ — there existed a recognition that everything in the cosmos was inextricably connected in a way that necessarily required the investigation of multiple aspects of it. This holistic approach to life and thought was considered the norm for the earlier polymaths ‘for whom the unity of knowledges, branches on a common tree, reflected the unity of the cosmos.’

  The prevailing philosophy of each society in human history has had some part to play in encouraging polymathy, albeit for differing reasons. But there is a common thread weaving through each of these world views, regardless of time and place. This thread is the holistic outlook — one that can be found in Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Christian, European Renaissance and West African Yoruba philosophies, as well as in Confucian, Taoist, Islamic, Hindu, Polynesian and Mayan cosmological frameworks. Historian of science and Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr confirms this:

  One might say that the aim of all Islamic sciences — and, more generally speaking, all of the medieval and ancient cosmological sciences — is to show the unity and interrelatedness of all that exists, so that, in contemplating the unity of the cosmos, man maybe led to the unity of the Divine Principle, of which the unity of Nature is the image.

  For example, the Islamic concept of Tawheed, which alludes to the oneness of God and the unity of the cosmos was what motivated an entire era of Muslim polymathy. Nasr elucidates:

  Tawheed in Arabic not only means unity but ‘to make one’ — integration. So integration was one of the most important consequences of Islamic Revelation. The Quran itself and its message of unity is why classical Islamic civilisation always emphasised the importance of polymathy and was why it produced so many polymaths.

  While Muslims in fact became known as the muwahidun or the ‘unifiers,’ such unity of this Divine Principle was recognised in most societies: to Aboriginal tribes it was arungquiltha, to Polynesian tribes mana, to Mesoamerican tribes waken. As Fritjof Capra, physicist and author of the Tao of Physics confirms:

  The fundamental interconnectedness of all phenomena, which is the central insight of polymaths who are systemic thinkers, is also the fundamental insight of Eastern spiritual traditions, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Taoism.

  The thirteenth-century Christian philosopher and polymath Thomas Aquinas described how theology could bring all our areas of knowledge together, offering a glimpse of ‘God’s own knowledge, which is the single and simple vision of everything.’ Influenced by this, Cambridge scholar Keith Eyeons, author of The Theology of Everything, explains how the Divine Unity was seen by Christian polymaths as the original source, and how that naturally inferred the interconnectedness of everything:

  God is the source of the rational structures of the universe investigated by scientists. God also has a glory and a beauty which is partly glimpsed through creation. Furthermore, God is love, and the Christian belief in the Trinity suggests that there are relationships of love within the threefold nature of God. Human relationships and communities therefore reflect something of the character of the divine consciousness which shapes the universe. Combining those theological ideas indicates that, for example, physics, art, and friendship are all connected.

  Whether or not Leonardo da Vinci, our quintessential polymath, held the same outlook because of his Christian beliefs is not clear. We do know, however, that he was interested in the holistic ideas of the East. Martin Kemp, the world’s foremost expert on Leonardo confirmed this:

  Leonardo spoke to sea captains to enquire about other cultures. He would have been particularly interested in the more holistic philosophies which often characterised thought outside of European specialised thought, and thought in which rather the rigid procedures of empirical data are less prevalent and less dominant.

  In contending that everything is inextricably connected, Leonardo believed strongly that one discipline could not be fully understood without the firm comprehension of several others. He often pointed to the fundamental connections between painting, music, poetry, philosophy and science. ‘He who despises painting loves neither philosophy nor nature’ he said, ‘music may be called the sister of painting’ and ‘if poetry treats of moral philosophy, painting has to do with natural philosophy.’ The entire world (and the knowledge of it), according to Leonardo, is one big (Italian!) family. Indeed, it is because he didn’t see things in categories that his notes seem so sporadic — he switched between subjects naturally because he saw everything as connected. As Kemp says:

  Leonardo was a kind of pathological lateral thinker . . . so when exploring anatomy, he’ll be looking at the heart, the movement of water . . . And when exploring movement of water, he’ll be thinking about the curling of hair, and so on — it wou
ld be an infinite spiralling on of these related interests, and underneath all this variety there is a common thing, a cause and effect.

  But the holistic outlook is by no means exclusive to ancient, premodern philosophies and religious cosmologies. It is also a feature of the modern scientific paradigm. E.O. Wilson, regarded by many as one of the world’s leading scientists and a champion of reason and the scientific method, himself calls for the unity of knowledge in his book Consilience. ‘A united system of knowledge,’ he argues, ‘is the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality.’ This world view, according to E.O. Wilson, is the natural state of the human conscience. He emphasises that the unification of knowledge ‘gratifies impulses that rise from the admirable side of human nature’ and in fact ‘gives ultimate purpose to intellect.’

  Many of the world’s greatest thinkers in the history of modern Western science and philosophy have commented on the usefulness (and sometimes indispensability) of this outlook. Again, it is of no surprise that many of these were in fact polymaths. Goethe saw nature as ‘one great harmonious whole’ and Humboldt had a ‘habit of viewing the Globe as a great whole.’ Buckminster Fuller emphasised the world as being a single entity or an ‘unfragmented whole’ and expressed a firm belief in its absolute unity and the consequent need for the ‘comprehensivist’ — someone likely to have a more rounded understanding of the cosmos. It is a method of thought that treats everything in the world as part of one single field within which everything is interconnected.