W7P1: The Polymathic Personality

https://www.academia.edu/37288514/Polymathy_A_New_Outlook

https://www.academia.edu/11357695/Artistic_Scientists_and_Scientific_Artists

Some people possess a personality, i.e., a set of motivational, emotional and cognitive patterns, that can be intimately associated with the undertaking of a polymathic life project

A person with a polymathic personality places cardinal value upon and is driven toward two principal goals: (i) the development of a conscience with as much richness of knowledge and experience as possible and (ii) exercise one’s potential agency to enhance and transform the world.

Polymathic people also tend to see beyond the vocation-avocational dichotomy. While some non-polymathic people may compartmentalize their activities between vocational and avocational — the former being useful while the latter being peripheral and alienated from one’s professional realm —, polymathic people will instead seek to integrate their “bewildering miscellany of activities” (cf. R. Root-Bernstein et al. 1995, p. 131) into successful and effective “networks of enterprise” (see Gruber 1988, 1989).

The polymathic pursuit entails a constant process of encodement, reencodement and sophistication of sets of mathemata across different domains, which contrasts with the behavior of other types who do not venture much outside their primary domain (specialists) or who seek breadth but not so much depth of knowledge (dilettantes). By delving into diverse fields and making the brain cope with lots of new information often, polymathic people may have access to unique opportunities to improve their productivity and efficiency, especially regarding general learning, creativity, and resource (e.g., time, information) management

Biographic and historiometric studies show that outstandingly creative people tend to be also unusually polymathic (see R. Root-Bernstein et al., 1993, 1995, 2008). Thus, it can be posed that polymathic behavior may play a prominent role for people who pursue particularly disruptive kinds of goals, such as pioneering a new discipline or challenging the assumptions of an existing field.

The first stage, polymathic antecedents, refers to personality characteristics, aptitudes, and behavioral tendencies that are primordial elements in a polymathic life project. The second stage, polymathic mediators, refers to stores of mathemata and procedural skills that are acquired and developed along a person’s life; they are pivotal for one’s progress toward polymathic goals. The third stage, polymathic achievements, refers to attainments and outcomes that represent the pinnacle of the polymathic development; they include valuable personal achievements as well as the generation of valuable contributions to society