In support of Renaissance men (and Women)

     

Not long ago, my friend Gordon, a Renaissance man in his own right, invited my wife and me to tour the Di Vinci exhibition at California University.  It was a marvel.  The film clip, full scale working models of Di Vinci’s drawings and other materials introduced us to a thinker far ahead of his time.  Local residents should make plans to view this world class exhibit before it departs, on May 6, 2012.

For Di Vinci, there were no walls between art, architecture, science, medicine, anatomy, aviation and industrial process.  His mind flowed freely from one discipline to the other.   This permitted him to connect the dots on matters that would not be revisited for a thousand years.   Unfortunately, unlike Di Vinci or Newton or even Einstein, the day when one can know everything there is to know about everything, or even a great deal about many things, is over.  Even my friend Gordon, who can jump from dry bulk shipping, to game theory, to Mediterranean history gets lost on quantum physics.  The modern era is mostly about knowing everything there is to know about one thing, and only one thing, extremely well.

We do not permit our personal physician to perform heart surgery.  The pastry chef cannot prepare our brace of quail.  The man who hangs dry wall cannot repair our roof.  The roofer cannot clean our chimney.  No one would hire a family lawyer for a murder trial.  My daughter, the avian veterinarian, will not examine a cat.  Most people feel safer in the hands of a specialist. The world is complicated and there is simply too much information.

  Having said this, in a world where everyone is specializing in something, the future may still belong to those who can connect the dots and cross over into several disciplines.  The renaissance of the Renaissance man is upon us.  After viewing the Di Vinci exhibit,   I thought about an orthopedic surgeon I know.  He has a Carnegie Mellon engineering degree and graduated from Harvard Medical School.  In his spare time he helps run the Carnegie Robotics lab.  Engineering and bone anatomy make him the ideal choice.   Another example is Obama’s choice for the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim:  Dartmouth President, medical doctor and anthropologist.  Polymaths like the best -selling authors, Jared-Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell also come to mind.  These roving scientist/ journalists explore many disciplines to give us new views of our past and future.

 Then there are the new and expanding fields of cross-over academic study.  For example: behavioral economics, environmental studies, emerging country developmental studies, evolutionary psychology and medical and legal philosophy come to mind.  These disciplines require our future professionals to dive into the hard sciences and the social sciences. To learn to think like a lawyer or physician, from a philosophical prospective.  In other words, to connect the dots.

 We will continue to need specialists to know everything about a narrow subject.  We will also need the new renaissance men to pave the way to the future.  Like my friend, Gordon, they are a lot more interesting at a dinner party.