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Great piece. One of the best places cultivating this type of polymathy today is Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program. https://symsys.stanford.edu/ https://symsys

Great piece. One of the best places cultivating this type of polymathy today is Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program. https://symsys.stanford.edu/ https://symsys.stanford.edu/

EstanislaoStan 2y ago
I'll also plug St. John's College. https://www.sjc.edu https://www.sjc.edu
- lolcatuser 2y ago
  Definitely. This, plus a graduate degree in a more specific field, and you end up with a very well-rounded education.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    FYI I just read some more about polymathy and had a look at the curricula. To me it feels really a bit too 'meta'. You might as well say, stay open and curious to any knowledge. That said, still I'm open and curious... could you please be so kind as to elaborate how that education is very well-rounded? What would the studies yield more concretely?
- KPGv2 2y ago
  I'll plug The University of Texas, specifically the Natural Sciences and Liberal Arts colleges (COLA and CONS). This is because they used to be the same college, and as such have loads of slots for elective courses and often you'll find students from one taking classes in the other college. I was able to complete degrees in COLA and a CONS simultaneously in four years with one of those four years being study abroad studying one subject to the exclusion of everything else because of it. When I graduated, I had studied two foreign languages and taken elective/upper div courses in poetry, immigration policy, ethics, mathematics, and computer science. Unless things have drastically changed since I graduated, it still holds true for UT in particular, and is one reason I consider my education to have been so great.
bullshy 2y ago
you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created... that's the physics of this.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again, most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need encouragement at all.
  - Swizec 2y ago
    Almost everyone is a curious polymath until institutions beat it out of them. We could start simply by nourishing curiosity
  - brm 2y ago
    They don't have to actively cultivate it but they should remove the walls between it. There's a lot of red tape/administrative confusion at most schools if you want to do anything interdisciplinary, especially if you want to cross more than two disciplines. Institutions should be more like buffets for the polymath. If I want to interlink say landscape architecture, sculpture, acoustics, materials science and biology I shouldn't need more than one signoff much less the 5 it would probably take to do work in something like that at most universities.
    - numpy-thagoras 2y ago
      The way to 'beat' the system's hard testing requirements is to make the interdisciplinary programs more involved, more quantitative, and just be more thorough and engaging, including soft skills elements. I think the best outcome is to have such students crush their standardized tests by outperforming them due to having a higher baseline because of the interdisciplinary program's curriculum.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
musicale 2y ago
It does look interesting (and related to the Systems school proposed by TFA), though I've also heard it described as a watered-down or easier CS degree. (Then again, CS itself is sometimes criticized as a watered-down or easier engineering degree, or a degree in calculators.) Data Science sometimes gets a similar watered-down label, but it looks like Stanford's program (at least) might be somewhat technical and may incorporate scientific computation, as well as statistical applications.
- mizzao 2y ago
  The prestige of the degree seems to come more from the quality of the students that are admitted, than what is actually taught to them.

Great piece. One of the best places cultivating this type of polymathy today is Stanford's Symbolic Systems Program. https://symsys.stanford.edu/ https://symsys.stanford.edu/

EstanislaoStan 2y ago

I'll also plug St. John's College. https://www.sjc.edu https://www.sjc.edu

lolcatuser 2y ago
Definitely. This, plus a graduate degree in a more specific field, and you end up with a very well-rounded education.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  FYI I just read some more about polymathy and had a look at the curricula. To me it feels really a bit too 'meta'. You might as well say, stay open and curious to any knowledge. That said, still I'm open and curious... could you please be so kind as to elaborate how that education is very well-rounded? What would the studies yield more concretely?
KPGv2 2y ago
I'll plug The University of Texas, specifically the Natural Sciences and Liberal Arts colleges (COLA and CONS). This is because they used to be the same college, and as such have loads of slots for elective courses and often you'll find students from one taking classes in the other college. I was able to complete degrees in COLA and a CONS simultaneously in four years with one of those four years being study abroad studying one subject to the exclusion of everything else because of it. When I graduated, I had studied two foreign languages and taken elective/upper div courses in poetry, immigration policy, ethics, mathematics, and computer science. Unless things have drastically changed since I graduated, it still holds true for UT in particular, and is one reason I consider my education to have been so great.

bullshy 2y ago

you can't create real polymath... polymaths are self-created... that's the physics of this.

satvikpendem 2y ago
Yeah this is what I don't understand as well, most of the polymath type people I know are naturally curious and self motivated for whatever it is they want to study and do. I am not sure what or how an institution can cultivate such behavior. I suppose it can encourage it to people but again, most polymaths are naturally self motivated and don't need encouragement at all.
- Swizec 2y ago
  Almost everyone is a curious polymath until institutions beat it out of them. We could start simply by nourishing curiosity
- brm 2y ago
  They don't have to actively cultivate it but they should remove the walls between it. There's a lot of red tape/administrative confusion at most schools if you want to do anything interdisciplinary, especially if you want to cross more than two disciplines. Institutions should be more like buffets for the polymath. If I want to interlink say landscape architecture, sculpture, acoustics, materials science and biology I shouldn't need more than one signoff much less the 5 it would probably take to do work in something like that at most universities.
  - numpy-thagoras 2y ago
    The way to 'beat' the system's hard testing requirements is to make the interdisciplinary programs more involved, more quantitative, and just be more thorough and engaging, including soft skills elements. I think the best outcome is to have such students crush their standardized tests by outperforming them due to having a higher baseline because of the interdisciplinary program's curriculum.
- jvanderbot 2y ago

musicale 2y ago

It does look interesting (and related to the Systems school proposed by TFA), though I've also heard it described as a watered-down or easier CS degree. (Then again, CS itself is sometimes criticized as a watered-down or easier engineering degree, or a degree in calculators.) Data Science sometimes gets a similar watered-down label, but it looks like Stanford's program (at least) might be somewhat technical and may incorporate scientific computation, as well as statistical applications.

mizzao 2y ago
The prestige of the degree seems to come more from the quality of the students that are admitted, than what is actually taught to them.