Are Polymaths the Antidote to Save Humanity from Itself?
Polymaths once ignited the world...yet we’ve doused their fire with specialists.
I’ve written before about the Da Vinci Factor…It's the leap that transcends what was, because AI, at least today, can only build on what has been. It can’t, yet, explode into what never existed...like Da Vinci did.
Da Vinci painted The Last Supper when his contemporaries struggled with the concept of perspective. He sketched helicopters and dreamed of flight centuries before the invention of engines. He studied anatomy and painted in a way that was unlike anyone else. Da Vinci bridged art and science...combining vision and practicality.
That’s the leap of imagination...the synapse leap, as I call it. It's not pattern recognition...not code optimization...but pure curiosity, unchained by category, unfettered by convention, and a leap into the unknown...the whatever...but always with purpose.
The polymath drove every era of progress...
Today, we worship specialization; however, it was never the specialists who changed what was. It was the ones who dared to bridge worlds. AI might help perfect what exists...but only imagination will invent what’s missing.
James Joyce wrote, “A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
We’ve lost the courage to make those errors. Closing the portals through which true innovation streamed because machines don’t take risks. They repeat. They refine. They iterate. Humans were built to imagine, to leap, to fail, and...to try again.
That’s the Da Vinci Factor. It's the bridge between creativity and curiosity, between logic and wonder, and...between the possible and what might be.
Here’s a to-do list for the Polymath Age. It’s a list with some points that will be familiar to my readers….
Albert Einstein stated, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”
If this resonates with you, then...join me. My loyal readers know this is part of a bigger journey we’ve been taking together in IMAGINE.
AI may master calculation, but, so far, only humans can wonder. That is the Da Vinci Factor...that is imagination in motion. It's what endures.
High-tech enablement, high-touch curiosity, and high Human imagination stand between us and the machine.
What's your view?
Strategic advisor: innovating, branding, strategic marketing, corporate and business strategy - Boards
1wThis is great and so true David. I love your phrase “AI might perfect what exists…but only imagination will invent what is missing” the Davinci factor. Pure genius!!
Principal UX Designer (30 Years) | Consultant | Teaching Holistic UX Design on Udemy | Technology, Arts & Culture
2wAs Steve Jobs paraphrased: "Stay hungry, stay foolish". A child's curiosity is all we need to string two unknowns together to shape something new. Da Vinci looked at water streams for hours on end to understand their physics and depict them with unprecedented accuracy. Your to-do list really resonates with me. Having directed myself into whatever path my curiosity led me towards has enriched my life and made me capable of talking deeply to almost everyone I've met—from dentists to CEOs, from homeless people to scientists. Opening up your curiosity may not lead you to great discoveries, but it at least enhances your perspective on life and on those around you. You don't need to be a genius—we are all born as polymaths. We just need to nurture this mindset more. Thank you for your contribution to this.
Regional Sales & Marketing Manager | TMMi Level 5 Software Testing AIDC/RFID ERP
2wSounds a break thru
GET SOCIAL, OR GET LOST! | Financial, FinTech, and Cybersecurity B2B Content Writer | FinTech and Wall Street Lead Generation
2wDavid, your exploration of the polymath’s essential role truly ignites a hopeful vision for our future. It’s fascinating to consider that by encouraging a spirit of boundless exploration, we might just cultivate the fertile ground for entirely novel solutions to emerge, far beyond what current computational abilities can conjure. This notion of courageous exploration, moving beyond established pathways, is incredibly inspiring. #TheDaVinciFactor #HumanImagination #Creativity
Technology visionary, customer experience, project and product lead, published author
2wI once consulted with a university trying to better enable what it euphemistically called "inter-disciplinary research clusters," which I was told is where the "real innovation" is happening. The case study was bio-mechanical engineering, across not just professional disciplines, but across campuses and institutions, and even countries. The essential "loose-ness" of the medium was considered important, less group-think and more blue sky. Looking deeper into that was fascinating, how facts in biology found metaphors in engineering and electronics, and vice versa. Specialisation is the path that "education" has deliberately driven us down, ever narrowing the perspective to enable disciplines to keep up, but I believe you're absolutely right. Polymaths need to sit astride knowledge. I keep thinking about John Young, 1773-1829, a prolific polymath regarded even in his time with so much suspicion that he published much of his work under pseudonyms. You can't create a polymath, the best we can hope for is to nurture and feed their curiosity.