So the claim is that anybody who could become a polymath, does? And that people who specialize narrowly do so because they lack the capacity to be broader?
I don’t know how you would look at someone who works in a specialized area and conclude that he could, or couldn’t, have been a polymath if he had tried. One imperfect proxy, I guess, would be if our specialist has well-developed skills outside his profession. Are mathematicians below average in outside skills, compared to the amount of focus needed for their work? I’ve known or encountered a sizable minority who could have been musicians or writers instead; I have the anecdotal impression that mathematicians don’t do too badly on that score. Of course, mathematicians do tend to be less casually conversant with non-math stuff than average.
Or maybe you’re talking about something different. Maybe the capacity to be a polymath is not just plenty of innate abilities at different things, but the will and desire to set up a self-designed, varied life instead of a fixed one. Some people with varied abilities choose to give up all their skills but one; some people refuse, and insist on blending or simultaneously using their different skills. In that case, it’s probably even harder to test the “capacity to be a polymath,” because it seems kind of tautological—but I would instinctively agree that very specialized people probably don’t have it.
So the claim is that anybody who could become a polymath, does? And that people who specialize narrowly do so because they lack the capacity to be broader?
I don’t know how you would look at someone who works in a specialized area and conclude that he could, or couldn’t, have been a polymath if he had tried. One imperfect proxy, I guess, would be if our specialist has well-developed skills outside his profession. Are mathematicians below average in outside skills, compared to the amount of focus needed for their work? I’ve known or encountered a sizable minority who could have been musicians or writers instead; I have the anecdotal impression that mathematicians don’t do too badly on that score. Of course, mathematicians do tend to be less casually conversant with non-math stuff than average.
Or maybe you’re talking about something different. Maybe the capacity to be a polymath is not just plenty of innate abilities at different things, but the will and desire to set up a self-designed, varied life instead of a fixed one. Some people with varied abilities choose to give up all their skills but one; some people refuse, and insist on blending or simultaneously using their different skills. In that case, it’s probably even harder to test the “capacity to be a polymath,” because it seems kind of tautological—but I would instinctively agree that very specialized people probably don’t have it.
By can I mean see themselves as having the option, that’s all.