The burden of specialization
Why it is time to free your inner polymath
We have been reading and really enjoying Waqās Ahmed’s book, ‘The Polymath – Unlocking the power of human versality’. This post is largely a collection of his observations and commentary, but it fits very well with the model we have been developing.
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Zoologist and ethnologist Desmond Morris wrote in The Naked Ape that humans are by nature the most non-specialized, adaptive, opportunistic animal of all and in a world where specialization in all spheres of life is almost compulsory, it is difficult for us today to imagine that for most of human history, polymathy was considered normal, even natural. So, why is the system still manufacturing one-dimensional monomathic specialists?
THE MYTH OF THE SPECIALIST IS BASED ON A FLAWED ASSUMPTION.
Following the industrial revolution, a mass education system was introduced to meet the needs of industrial production. Unfortunately, the alienating nature of this widespread education came at the expense of intellectual unity, synthesis and therefore understanding.
The rise of the modern corporation has had profound effects on the nature of work and […] the efficiency school of labor management pioneered by Frederick Taylor ushered in a new era in the mechanization of labor and the rise of specialization en-masse – this was supported by the educational system, which catered for the resources needed by those economic forces and thus became key to facilitating and sustaining a specialized society. The curriculum was designed to produce factory laborers who could read instruction manuals, at most, and specialized in one particular area.
Like the invisible hand, ‘specialization’ has become a force of its own, an ideology promoted and sustained by those whom it serves most and propagated as ‘the obvious way things are done’. We assume that (at least a perceived) single-minded focus equals better productivity, efficiency and therefore greater financial reward. So, a perpetual compartmentalization of society means a vicious cycle in which everybody keeps to their own ‘lane’.
Thanks to this laborious process of socio-psychological conditioning, coupled now with the seemingly exponential multiplication of information and a particular notion of ‘work’ in people’s minds, we have developed an excessively specialized society.
A CHANGE OF FOCUS WILL BE FORCED UPON US
With machine learning / artificial intelligence and the so-called technological singularity looming, the world has little choice but to see a revival of the polymath, as it is only this species of multi-faceted, complex, creative, versatile and inimitable human that will have any value or relevance in a highly complex, automated, super-intelligent future.
“There is a serious snag in the specialist way of life […] everything is fine as long as the special survival device works, but if the environment undergoes a major change the specialist is left stranded” Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
AI will eventually release us from the burden of accumulating and sorting information. It will conquer the domain of technical specialization. The relevance of the biological mind to the future of knowledge must then be to use the multifarious knowledges – combine, curate, fuse and connect them – to formulate a uniquely human wisdom and understanding.
“The nineteenth century created the working class, the coming century will create the ‘useless class’ – billions with no military or economic comfort. Giving meaning to their lives will be the big challenge of the future”
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st century
So instead of being inadequate, expensive, dispensable machine substitutes, humans would find meaning in their own lives (and society will find meaning in them) if they focused on establishing their own irreplaceable human uniqueness. And to achieve this, we must change the system itself – its prevailing culture, educational curricula and pedagogy, social structures, institutions, work environment and indeed its general worldview – and replace it with one that breeds and encourages polymathic minds.
“Educational institutions don’t need to train people to be cogs in a machine like during the industrial age – machines will be much cheaper … they ought to train people to deal with more complex, ill-defined jobs”.
Anders Sandberg, Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute
Occupational diversification is actually the surest means to survival. During workplace change people feel extremely vulnerable if their particular field is shrinking in its need for a workforce. A more diverse range of skills means that the individual is confident of their capacity to obtain employment in a range of fields. This can give the individual a greater sense of empowerment which ultimately leads to greater productivity and efficiency.
“Adaptability to inevitable career change will be an essential survival strategy for the coming decades”
Yuval Noah Harari
Education ought therefore to be focused on developing skills that can be applied to more than one domain or at the very least be transferable, particularly as what one might specialize in today could be out of date tomorrow, given the economically, politically and technologically volatile times in which we find ourselves. The obsessive compartmentalization of knowledge into fields is a misguided simplification.
“Key realities often slip through the cracks between artificially created disciplines”
Edgar Morin
POLYMATHY IS TRANSFORMATIONAL.
We must all recondition our minds to be able to think and operate like the polymath, adopting the timeless traits and methods of polymaths throughout history. Many sidedness comes in many forms. The real polymath has a type of mind and approach that is far more substantial and holistic. This ‘multifacetness’ requires effective switching between various cognitive aptitudes, strands of knowledge and emotional and intellectual attributes – the ability and practice of epistemological shifting.
Technically, the Polymath should excel in at least three seemingly unrelated fields (‘poly’ being more than two). But, in reality, to suggest that someone has excelled in or is accomplished in particular fields would be a relative statement. Accomplishment comes in various forms and is a genuinely subjective state of being.
Polymathy refers to […] an attitude towards knowledge, learning and creating, which entails the progressive development of three characteristics: breadth, depth and integration (Michael Araki[1])
Breadth refers to knowledge that is wide-ranging, covering different and often disparate domains
Depth means that this knowledge is significantly profound, whether it refers to technical, epistemic or experiential knowledge
Integration means that this knowledge is significantly integrated and interrelated, which is typically manifested through the development of synergistic networks of enterprise and through the generation of creative products arising from effective combinations of ideas from seemingly disparate domains”
Leaders are intrinsically required to be synthesizers of information. They are expected to have rounded knowledge of multiple factors and perspectives that might influence the most important decisions. Leaders are charged with taking multiple seemingly unrelated yet intrinsically connected factors into consideration. The nature of their job requires them to step back and assess the big picture, evaluate the synergies and connect the necessary dots. Thoroughly well versed in each dimension of the business she or he understands how each of these dimensions best fits into the overall corporate puzzle. So, a great leader is not merely a bold decision-maker BUT a holistically informed decision-maker, one who is able to understand the significance of context and have a sense of perspective.
Drawing from Isaiah Berlin’s ‘fox and hedgehog’ analogy, Philip Tetlock contends that the fox – the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events – is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one traditional and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems.
“The manager solves manageable problems, a leader solves unknown problems”
Anders Sandberg
We will conclude this post with the thoughts of the great Sir Ken Robinson. His TED talk ‘Do schools kill creativity’ is one of the most viewed of all time (seen by 380m people in 160 countries). If you haven’t seen it, watch it … it is funny and thought provoking.
His point was that there is a need to radically rethink our view of intelligence … encouraging diverse, multi-modal forms of thinking … fostering dynamic intelligence that drives creativity (which is the process of having original ideas that have value and comes about by the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things), and championing (rather than suppressing) distinctiveness. He believed passionately that our systems are out-moded – and that we can’t afford that socially, culturally or economically any more.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/arakimichael/
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