Concept
Polymath
Overview
A polymath or polyhistor is an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Polymaths often prefer a specific context in which to explain their knowledge, but some are gifted at explaining abstractly and creatively.
Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. This is expressed in the term Renaissance man, often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectually, artistically, socially, physically, and spiritually.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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With the same inequalities of excess or diminution, all the extremes are differenced one from another, and the means from the means, either according to the quantity of the numbers or the measure of geometry; which Aristotle thus explains, observing that nete exceeds mese by a third part of itself, and hypate is exceeded by paramese in the same proportion, so that the excesses stand in proportion. For by the same…
Plutarch, Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 1
States what Polymath is; the author is tied to Polymath in the knowledge graph.
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after them almost all the Peripatetics give the same division of philosophy. It is absolutely requisite that the complete person he contemplator of things which have a being, and the practiser of those thing which are decent; and this easily appears by the following instances.
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Polymath is; the author is tied to Polymath in the knowledge graph.
Age igitur ingrediamur et unumquodque ut intellegi atque capi potest dispiciamus; nam, sicut optime dictum uidetur, eruditi est hominis unum quodque ut ipsum est ita de eo fidem capere temptare. Nam cum tres sint speculatiuae partes, _naturalis_, in motu inabstracta [Greek: anupexairetos] (considerat enim corporum formas cum materia, quae a corporibus actu separari non possunt, quae corpora in motu sunt ut cum…
Boethius, The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
The author is tied to Polymath in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Polymath
- Albert Schweitzer
- Avicenna
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Abhinavagupta
- Ibn Hazm
- Leucippus
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Boethius
- William Whewell
- Oswald Spengler
- Christopher Hitchens
- Pythagoras
- Herbert Spencer
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Renaissance
- Roger Bacon
- Al-Kindi
- Jean Bodin
- Nicholas of Cusa
- Pavel Florensky
- Thomas Hobbes
- Aristotle
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- Hypatia
Related ideas
- Ibn Tufayl
- Avicenna
- Ancient Greek
- Industrial Revolution
- Interdisciplinarity
- Robert Burton
- The Anatomy of Melancholy
- Latin
- Leonardo da Vinci
- University
- Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Aesthetics
- Late Middle Ages
- Poetry
- Philology
- Plutarch
- Renaissance
- Al-Kindi
- Nicholas of Cusa
- Renaissance humanism
- Edward Craig (philosopher)
- Islamic Golden Age
- Benjamin Franklin
- Pedagogy
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.