atharva's internet place

Two archetypes of people capture my imagination. They could be placed on two ends of a spectrum. The first is the polymath—a person who has done a whole bunch of things to remarkable effect. By the standards of modernity, they have lived many lives.

To throw out a bunch of examples:

• Leonardo da Vinci: Italian painter, sculptor, engineer, astronomer, anatomist, biologist, geologist, physicist, architect, musician, philosopher, and humanist.
• Aristotle: Greek philosopher who studied and wrote about many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theatre, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.
• Gottfried Leibniz: German philosopher, theologian, physicist, mathematician, historian, librarian and inventor.
• Rabindranath Tagore: Indian poet, artist, playwright, novelist, educationist, social reformer, nationalist, business manager and composer.
• Marie Curie: Nobel Prize winner in both Chemistry and Physics.
• Anna Kiesenhofer: Olympic gold medallist in cycling and post-doctoral mathematician.

Interestingly, polymathyness (for the lack of a better word) seems to decline with time in my examples, but that likely reflects more on the world than it does on these fine people. But my point still stands. There are people who are able to find reasonable success across different, unrelated fields. It's incomplete to define them by a singular label or identity.

These people inspire me; I too wish to lead a life of variegated interest.

Now is a good time to cue the Heinlein quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

(I'm pleasantly surprised at the use of “A human being” instead of “A man”.)

Now for the second and less common archetype, the monomath. This is a person who has at various pivotal moments in their life discovered their niche and focused mission—and most things they pursue can be explained in terms of this singular mission or theme.

This one is a bit harder to explain, so time to throw examples with some more details.

• Larry Tessler: A human-computer interaction specialist who dedicated his life to removing “modes” from all user interfaces. His website is nomodes.com, his number plate displayed “NOMODES” and his Twitter handle was @nomodes. He invented copy-and-paste, as a part of his mission to remove modes.
• M. C. Escher: An artist who spent most of his life making mathematical art that explores patterns emerging from simple rules, strange loops and self-reference. When you see an Escher, you know exactly what to expect.
• Nassim Taleb: An essayist and former options trader who authored the Incerto, a five-volume philosophical essay on randomness, risk and uncertainty. That's pretty much his whole thing. He's written books, published papers and hurled insults at people on Twitter over these ideas.

These people are inspiring to me too; I too wish to lead a life of focus and clarity.

It'd be fun to think of hypothetical people who can achieve polymonomathyness†. Someone who picked a niche mission, achieved some part of it and then pivoted to a new mission. Somewhat like my Skyrim character from back in the day, but in real life.

† To an extent, some of the people in my examples already meet this criteria.