Death, Stars, and Mathematics
Of Polymaths and the Liberal Arts
I recently read Susanna Clarke’s masterful novel Piranesi. Saying it is a delightful work of literature wouldn’t make it any justice. It is truly beautiful and surprisingly (for the size) deep. The world of grand halls, raging seas, and human-like statues is masterfully sculpted, the characters painted with just enough detail to let the reader’s wonder force him to truly get to know them, and the plot makes so that it is a book difficult to put down.
In those pages, I found a quote that left me thinking and led to this article.1 I’ve modified it from the original version so as to reveal as little detail from the book (which, again, I heavily recommend) as possible. Without further ado, here it goes:
‘When she was a teenager, she told a friend that she wanted to go study Death, Stars, and Mathematics.’
As my kind reader may notice, the last three words—which I italicized— serve as a title for this short piece. And for good reason—I promise. Inside this little quote inside this short book, I found a piece of myself; a piece of a struggle that has been raging inside my soul for a while now.
Passions, Life Choices, and Saint-Chapelle
It started when I faced one of the most terrifying questions 18 year olds get asked traditionally: what are you going to do with you life? Because of the particular context of my life, the question was phrased the following way: what do you want to study?
If I had know that simple sequence of words, I would have said something along those lines. But I was not only an idiot—as I still am—but an uncultured swine, and I didn’t know better. Even if I had known better, it wouldn’t have mattered much: colleges (that I know of) don’t offer a BSc in Death, Stars, and Mathematics, nor a BA in Truth, Cells, and Bioinformatics, or whatever other combination of interests I could have come up with at the time2.
And this is the thing: those are genuine interests. Or at least I think they are. It is perfectly normal for a human being to be interested in three seemingly unrelated matters such as death, stars, and mathematics. It has been since the dawn of time. At the very least, it feels natural to think so. One only needs to take a look at works of ancient civilizations to see how human wonder is naturally channeled into areas while still remaining in unity. See, for instance, ancient temples like the Parthenon, dedicated to Athena, where the worship of the Greek goddess of wisdom intertwines with the great, mathematical precision of architecture. Or, for a more recent example, look at Saint-Chapelle, where the light and high-vaulted ceilings come together to provide a spectacular home to one of the most important and, at the same time, most gory relics of the Catholic Church: the Crown of Thorns.
Examples abound. One just needs to look for them. After all, the human experience is not a collection of separate spheres, but a complex mesh of interconnected matters. Science and Philosophy, for a classic example, are not isolated entities. Nor are Faith and Reason. In the same vein, nor are Death, Stars, and Mathematics.
Of Polymaths
If such varied interests can and do exists then it makes sense for there to be individuals who pursue them no merely as passing interests or even passions, but as matters of fundamental vocational importance to be treated with great academic and professional rigor. Such individuals abound in history and have been called a variety a names, such as erudites or, the one I prefer, polymaths.
The first use of the word polymath allegedly comes from philosopher Johann von Wowern’s work De Polymathia tractatio: integri operis de studiis veterum published in 1603. von Wowern would define a polymathy as ‘knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies... ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them.’ This definition fits the etymology of the word itself from the Greek πολυμαθής (polumathḗs) that itself comes from πολύς (polús, much) and μανθάνω (manthánō, ‘I learn’), and literally means ‘having learnt much’ or ‘knowing much’.
With the appearance of the term in von Wowern’s work and that of other authors followed the usage of the term. It was put to good use, applied to many great scholars and important figures of history, mainly of the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. Gottfried Leibniz, for instance, is often categorized as a polymath, having written extensively on *takes a deep breath* theology, ethics, politics, law, history and philology, and having made great contributions to physics and mathematics. Leonhard Euler is a similar case3. Da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin are also often deemed polymaths. Though the term was of later use, I would add the likes of Aristotle, Pythagoras, St. Hildegard von Bingen and St. Albert Magnus4 to our quick, dirty, list of polymaths. Still, there are many, many more great and wise folk deserving of such a title, but too little time to make an exhaustive list when such is not our purpose.
Universities and Polymathy
The height of polymathy seems to have been the Renaissance, and afterwards polymaths seem to grew less and less common with time. A particular exemplification of this is the decay—or, in less aggressive terms, the specialization—of university studies. At one point, the purpose of going to university was to acquire a universal education (hence the name) which was distilled into, for a while at least, the Liberal Arts, composed of the Trivium—Rhetoric, Grammar, and Logic—and the Quadrivium—Arithmetics, Astronomy, Geometry, and Music.
Such courses and such an understanding of education seems to have been mostly wiped away from higher education institutions around the world at this point5.
What seems more interesting to me is not the subjects of the Liberal Arts per se (the understanding and meaning of each of those named has vastly evolved in the last few centuries) but the idea that all were fundamentally related to each other. Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric are inseparable: you need to understand the structure of language, the structure of thought, and the usage of language and thought in order to understand basically anything and produce works worth, at least, the paper they are written in. The same occurs with the Quadrivium. In the traditional understanding of it, arithmetics and music are not as separated and different as we might think. In fact, many would argue music is arithmetics in movement. Similarly, astronomy is geometry in movement.
In other words, there was an honest, undivided understanding of knowledge and education, where subjects were more like fuzzy regions in a diverse, bountiful landscape than walled gardens housing a single type of plant.
Two Approaches
This understanding of knowledge as presented in the traditional sense in the Liberal Arts seems religious at its core: the Truth is settled; one believes it exists, though he tries to explain it. The opposite way of thinking, in which one specializes to then try to discern the overarching reality that rules all things by piecing together little parts of a ‘puzzle’ of sorts, can even seem a bit gnostic at times: one tries, through details, to acquire some secret knowledge of the world6.
The dilemma here presented I would describe in the following way: can one piece together a tree from its parts? Leaf by leaf? Branch by branch? Can a matter of knowledge be fully pieced and understood from the study of its parts? Or does one need to analyze first the problem universally and then, and only then, dive into the specifics to enrich his understanding of the thing as a whole?
Wonder Is the Key
What can we do, then? What do we ought to do?
Not all of us are going to be Leibniz, or Euler, or St. Albert Magnus. But that doesn’t exclude us from a responsibility to use our talents—intelligence and rational though being a couple of them—to achieve greatness.
And so, I would argue the answer to both of those questions is to nurture a sixth sense of sorts: wonder.
Go for a walk. Look at a tree from far away. Look at its branches, dancing with the wind. Do you hear that rustling? It’s the leaves that crown it.
Approach it. If you can reach one, gently pull a branch towards you. Look at it. Look at the leaves stemming from the branch, flexible yet strong. Look at every single one of them.
Now, wonder. Ask questions you know not the answer to. Is there a pattern to the leaves? Why are they green? Why are they shaped a certain way and not another? Why are they held in branches, crowning the tree, and not merely in the trunk? And many more…
If you’ve done this, you’ve asked questions on many subjects already. Biology and ecology, of course, but physics and chemistry (‘why are they [the leaves] green?’), geometry (‘why are they [the leaves] shaped a certain way and not another?’), arithmetics (‘is there a pattern to the leaves?’), and even topology via the study of fractals governing the overall structure of the tree.
And you are not finished.
You could look for a nest in the tree’s branches. Or for a squirrel running around them. Or some insect walking in and out of the crevices in the the bark and trunk of the tree. What do they eat? Why do they choose to live in the tree, or to pass through it? Do they simply live off the tree, as free-riders, or does their presence their aid it?
And, still, you are not finished. You’ll never be.
The world around you is vast and intricate. Don’t be a cynic: let it leave you speechless. But don’t try to possess it, because you can’t: being able to wonder and to enjoy the world without needing to own it is one of the greatest signs of intellectual and spiritual maturity.
There are surely many technical aspects of polymathy to discuss, but they are secondary to this innermost quality every man and woman should possess: the ability to wonder and be surprised.
With wonder awe, and a humble understanding of the world, one may, one day, truly get to know it; one may, one day, truly understand death, stars, and mathematics.
I finished the book about a month before I started writing this piece and I still vividly remembered many details (like the quote). This should give you a hint at how good a job Susanna Clarke did.
Instead, I ended up having to opt to double majoring in Biomedical Research and Philosophy. Death, DNA, and Meaning? Life, Proteins, and Metaphysics? I don’t know.
Some rumors say Euler wrote, by a mile, more academic content than anyone else, ever. I don’t doubt it.
I shall soon, God willing, write a few pieces about St. Albert, who is a personal hero of mine.
It persists in some strongholds. St. Thomas Aquinas College, for instance, has an impressive curriculum based on the traditional understanding of the Liberal Arts.
In many cases, only to turn it into some of form of wieldable power.
I love the way your experience of reading Clarke's Piranesi was a kind of detonator for topis on this essay....a wonder indeed!