Peter Burke - The Polymath: A Cultural History From Leonardo Da Vinci to Susan Sontag

THE POLYMATH

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THE POLYMATH

A CULTURAL HISTORY FROM

LEONARDO DA VINCI TO

SUSAN SONTAG

PETER BURKE

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

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Copyright 2020 Peter Burke

All rights reserved. Th

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Nothing is more beautiful than to know everything (Plato)

Ah, but a mans reach should exceed his grasp,

Or whats a heaven for?

(Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto)

Specialization is for insects

(Robert Heinlein)

In memory of Asa Briggs, David Daiches, Martin Wight and the Sussex project to redraw the map of learning

And for Maria Lcia, who is able to do three things at the same time v

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CONTENTS

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PLATES

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For the last twenty years or so I have been working, on and off , on the history of knowledge, publishing a general survey, A Social History ofKnowledge (2 vols., 20002012), an introduction to the subject, What isthe History of Knowledge? (2016), and most recently Exiles and Expatriatesin the History of Knowledge (2017). Like the book on exiles, the present study developed out of the general survey to become a book on its own.

I have been drawn to this topic for a long time. Although my mathematical and scientifi c illiteracy makes polymathy out of the question, I have long shared the view famously expressed by the French historians Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel that one writes better history by escaping from the confi nes of that discipline, at least from time to time.

As a student at Oxford, taking a three-year course in history, I went to lectures in other disciplines to Gilbert Ryle on philosophy, for instance, to Roy Harrod on economics, to J. R. R. Tolkien on medieval literature, to Michael Argyle on psychology and most important for my future to Edgar Wind on art history. As a postgraduate student, I began reading in sociology and anthropology, and attended seminars in the history of science as well as one organized by Norman Birnbaum and Iris Murdoch on the concept of alienation.

When I heard that the new University of Sussex was going to be organized in an interdisciplinary manner, I immediately applied for a position there and taught in the School of European Studies from 1962 to 1979, collaborating in teaching with colleagues in art history, x

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

sociology, and English and French literature. Th

anks to these experi

ences, at Sussex in particular, I felt that this was a book that I really had to write, about individuals and small groups concerned with the big picture as well as with detail and often engaged in the transfer or translation of ideas and practices from one discipline to another.

It has been a pleasure to keep company, however indirectly, with this gifted group of men and women, the polymaths discussed in this book, some of whom were old acquaintances, and in a few instances personal friends, while the achievements of others were discovered only in the course of the research.

I should like to thank Tarif Khalidi and Geoff rey Lloyd for their comments on chapter 1; Waqas Ahmed for sending me a questionnaire on polymaths in 2013 as well as an early draft of his book; Christoph Lundgreen, Fabian Krmer and the Zwei Kulturen Research Group at the Berlin Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften for a fruitful discussion of my ideas; and Ann Blair, Steven Boldy, Arndt Brendecke, Chris Clark, Ruth Finnegan, Mirus Fitzner, Jos Maria Garca Gonzlez, Michael Hunter, Gabriel Josipovici, Neil Kenny, Christel Lane, David Lane, Hansong Li, Robin Milner-Gulland, William OReilly, Ulinka Rublack, Nigel Spivey, Marek Tamm and Marianne Th

ormhlen for

information, suggestions and references.

Some of my thoughts about polymaths have been presented in print as well as in lecturersion is an improvement on its more sketchy predecessors. Presenting the same ideas in diff erent places or contexts has often suggested modifi cations. Hence I am extremely grateful to the audiences of my lectures on this topic in Belo Horizonte, Berlin, Brighton, Cambridge, Copenhagen, Engelsberg, Frankfurt and Gotha for their various questions and comments. My warm thanks also go to Robert Baldock and Heather McCallum at Yale University Press for welcoming the manuscript, and to their two anonymous readers and my copy-editor Richard Mason for their constructive suggestions. As usual, Maria Lcia read the whole manuscript and off ered wise advice.

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History, it has been said, is unkind to polymaths. Some are forgotten, while many are squashed into a category we can recognize

ey are

remembered, as we shall see again and again in what follows, for only one form or a few forms of their varied achievements. It is time to redress the balance. In fact, an increasing number of studies of individual polymaths have been published in recent years, perhaps in reaction against our culture of specialization. I have made grateful use of many of these monographs, which include not only studies of intellectual giants such as Leonardo and Leibniz but also some near-forgotten fi gures such as Dumont Durville and William Reneral surveys are more diffi cult

to fi nd, although their number is increasing, especially in the form of short contributions to journals or radio pr

In attempting such a survey, this book off ers an approach to the cultural and social history of knowledge. All forms of knowledge, practical as well as theoretical, deserve to have their histories written.

Hunter-gatherers needed a wide range of knowledges to survive, while farmers were celebrated as many-sided by the geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who was a polymath himselftisans, midwives, merchants, rulers, musicians, footballers and many other groups require and possess a segment of knowledge in which some individuals excel. In the last few years, the term polymath, once confi ned to scholars, has been extended to individuals whose achievements range from athletics to politics.

THE POLYMATH

DEFINITIONS

Th

e polymath discussion group, for instance, has defi ned the polymath as

someone who is interested in and learning about many subjects Th is

book, on the other hand, will concentrate on academic knowledge, formerly known as learning. It focuses on scholars with interests that were encyclopaedic in the original sense of running around the whole intellectual

course or curriculum, or at any rate around a major segment of that circle.

For this reason I have excluded two entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, who took degrees in economics and physics before founding Tesla and other companies, and Sergei Brin, who studied mathematics and computer science before founding Google together with another computer scientist, Larry Page. I also hesitated before including that many-sided man John Maynard Keynes, since most of his sides were not academic. Keynes was described by his friend Leonard Woolf as a don, a civil servant, a specu-lator, a businessman, a journalist, a writer, a farmer, a picture-dealer, a statesman, a theatrical manager, a book collector, and half a dozen other things. On the other hand, Keynes himself remarked that the master economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several diff erent directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher in some degree. On that criterion, not to mention his interest in the many interests of Isaac Newton, Keynes certainly qualifi