Comments on: Decline of the Polymath? http://telicthoughts.com/decline-of-the-polymath/ An independent blog about intelligent design Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:25:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Exile From Groggs http://telicthoughts.com/decline-of-the-polymath/#comment-3396 Exile From Groggs Mon, 03 Oct 2005 13:03:30 +0000 http://telicthoughts.com/?p=293#comment-3396 Part of the issue is the growth of specialist knowledge. It used to be the case that with a year of study you could get to grips with the bulk of a field of knowledge. But now to be recognised with a doctorate, you need to have specialist knowledge in a small sub-field of a section of knowledge - not just physics, but say elasticity within physics. This is a shame, because there are links between all sorts of fields - and it would be good for (say) specialists in biology to have a better handle on statistics than they often have. And often (say) physicists understand statistics, but don't understand the biology, so assume that (say) evolution has answered a lot of the questions that they don't have answers to. Part of the issue is the growth of specialist knowledge. It used to be the case that with a year of study you could get to grips with the bulk of a field of knowledge. But now to be recognised with a doctorate, you need to have specialist knowledge in a small sub-field of a section of knowledge - not just physics, but say elasticity within physics.

This is a shame, because there are links between all sorts of fields - and it would be good for (say) specialists in biology to have a better handle on statistics than they often have. And often (say) physicists understand statistics, but don't understand the biology, so assume that (say) evolution has answered a lot of the questions that they don't have answers to.

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