The opening paragraph of the preface to On the Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus (saint and antipope) has really got me pondering:
To do justice to this text, the translator and commentator should be an expert not in liturgiology alone, but should have expertise in textual criticism and in the social and legal history of third century Rome, together with facility in six ancient languages. The intense specialization of the modern academy prevents the raising up of the needed polymath, so a generalist and country parson has foolishly stepped into a breach, the existence of which he had not recognized when he agreed to undertake a simple translation.
I wonder how true Stewart-Sykes's observation on the modern academy is. A Semiticist could easily be familiar with all of the languages involved (Sahidic Coptic, Bohairic Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Latin). Given the crossover between lingustics and religious studies, our hypothetical semiticist might already have the necessary liturgiology, and would certainly know textual criticism.
Perhaps the overspecialization he describes is more structural — it's not that our polymath doesn't exist, it's that their location within the academy prevents them from doing this sort of important cross-disciplinary work. Or perhaps Stewart-Sykes is simply wrong.
I'd welcome comments from anyone who's in the academy.
Posted by Ben Brumfield at October 13, 2005 09:18 AMI don't think intellectuals in Hippolytus's day were by and large professionals. Philosophers of the time, I have been told, were not only aristocrats, but tended to come from families which specialized in producing philosophers. Philosophical dynasties, if you will.
These days this still applies to a diminishing percentage of academics. While between such "philosocrats" there certainly may be plenty of competition, their very ability to go on maintaining their status as intellectuals is rarely in any serious danger.
On the other hand, those who must jockey for position in a hypercompetitive market will need to specialize as much as possible because of the edge it gives them.*
So you could say that the number of polymaths in a society is at least partly dependent on how entitled and exclusive its intellectual class is.
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* I'm assuming this is obvious and doesn't need expanding.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 13, 2005 10:36 AMSo you could say that the number of polymaths in a society is at least partly dependent on how entitled and exclusive its intellectual class is.
So you'd argue that someone like Jefferson could be such a Renaissance man due in part to his place as landed gentry?
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 14, 2005 01:40 PMYes, I think that's one part of it. That's not everything, by any means. Take early chemists, for instance. They may certainly have been brilliant Renaissance men, but then the fundamental questions of chemistry in their day seem fairly straightforward to us, available for investigation, in principle, to anyone with enough disposable income to buy highly accurate measuring devices. It did not necessarily require years and years of formal study to grasp even the basic techniques they needed to begin to make a significant contribution to the field. But when I talk to modern chemists studying, say, catalytic reactions that occur on the surface of microscopic bits of platinum salts, it's another matter. I wind up pestering them with elementary questions of technique, surely missing whatever they think is actually interesting about their experiments. And what's the big deal about surfaces anyway?
On the other hand I met a fellow the other day who is an artist, and a very economically privileged person to boot. He told me with a perfectly straight face and meaningful look (sitting beneath an impressive painting of his dog) that he was "studying physics". I have to admit I nearly laughed.
In any case, I do not think that being a generalist is the quickest or surest way to making a living in just about any field.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 14, 2005 03:33 PM