Jose Carillo's English Forum - Time Out From English Grammar

TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR

This section features wide-ranging, thought-provoking articles in English on any subject under the sun. Its objective is to present new, mind-changing ideas as well as to show to serious students of English how the various tools of the language can be felicitously harnessed to report a momentous or life-changing finding or event, to espouse or oppose an idea, or to express a deeply felt view about the world around us.

The outstanding English-language expositions to be featured here will mostly be presented through links to the websites that carry them. To put a particular work in better context, links to critiques, biographical sketches, and various other material about the author and his or her works will usually be also provided.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new selections that will be presented here each week.

Joe Carillo

Polymaths are a many-splendored but endangered species

The editorial director of Intelligent Life magazine, Edward Carr, laments the growing scarcity of polymaths—people of encyclopedic learning or those who know a lot about a lot. “Polymaths were the product of a particular time, when great learning was a mark of distinction and few people had money and leisure,” he says. “Their moment has passed, like great houses or the horse-drawn carriage.”

MASA Polymath

Polymaths possess something that monomaths like most of us don’t, Carr explains, so while most scientists devote their careers to solving the everyday problems in their specializations, it is often from polymaths with a fresh eye or from another disciple where innovations originate. “The question is whether their loss has affected the course of human thought,” he says.

Read Edward Carr’s “The Last Days of the Polymath” in Intelligent Life now!

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