I’ve said before that when I was a kid, I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes. Not be like him, be him. He could practically solve the case before it began. He’d look at his prospective client and already know volumes of information about them. People have always perplexed me so this ability would be extremely beneficial to me.
As I got older, I learned about polymaths. A polymath is a person who has a broad and comprehensive knowledge about a broad range of subjects. This group of individuals claims the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington Carver, Hypatia of Alexandria, and Aristotle. I’d very much like to be in that group of people, but I don’t have a broad and comprehensive knowledge about a broad range of subjects.
Instead, I have knowledge of a wide spectrum of topics. I know a bit about a lot of things. So, I guess that makes me more of a Generalist. A generalist is defined as someone whose skills, interests, or habits are varied or unspecialized. When it comes to being interested in things I’m all over the board. My mind is like a squirrel on crack, jumping from topic to topic with astonishing speed. It can be a bit frustrating in that there is far more I want to learn, or do, than I will ever be able to learn or do in this lifetime.
This topic came up on a writer’s forum that I frequent when someone mentioned being a polymath. I posted that I always wanted to be a polymath but ended up being a generalist instead. That is when they introduced me to a new term – philomath.
A philomath is defined as a lover of learning, but especially in math. I like math, and most of the time I can do basic math (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in my head. Unfortunately, when you get beyond basic math, I suck. I could sort of do algebra in high school. I liked geometry but didn’t get most of it. Trigonometry was beyond me. When I got into college, studying Electronic Tech, I had to take Calculus I, II and III. I failed each one, but I needed them for my degree plan so I had to take each one again. I passed (barely) with a D- minus the second time around in each class. I still can’t tell you what you would apply calculus to other than finding the area under a curve.
The biggest problem I had with math was it didn’t mean anything to me at the time I was being taught. It was this strange, abstract language that no one would (or could) tell me what you did with it. Algebra did lend some help in figuring out programming later on when I got into that field. All that solving for X is sort of (not exactly) like computer programming. Whenever I would tell someone I was a programmer for NASA, they’d always say ‘You must be good at math!’ No, not really. I was good at logic and structure, which is different. I would like to understand math better, and one of my many projects is to go back and start with algebra and then go through geometry, trig, calculus and eventually linear algebra and discrete mathematics. The last two are used in artificial intelligence studies which, yes, is yet another topic I’m interested in.
But beyond math, I want to learn all sorts of things – cartooning, animation, Blender, philosophy, Stoicism, history, writing (there’s always more to learn about writing, even for us published authors), playing the piano and ukulele, more about Python programming, Arduinos ad Raspberry Pis, CNC routers, more about 3d printing, woodworking … I could go on but I doubt you have the time or interest in spending the next hour of me going on about all the topics.
Ultimately, maybe I’ll learn enough to become a polymath someday. I’ll certainly enjoy the journey. If I’m going to be nothing more than a philomath, I could live with that. I’ll keep learning as many things as I can. I’ll take shtuff I learned in one area and mash it up with something else from another area. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come up with something really caliwandalous. At the very least, hopefully I’ll have all the answers on bar trivia night.
What are you interested in learning, my Hordeling? Hit reply and let me know.
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