In this post I will describe the Renaissance Man ideal, how I believe it fits and fails to fit in the modern era, and what it means for me personally. This is a bit of a departure from my previous posts, which mostly discussed philosophical questions, but I think (and hope you will also think) that the themes discussed in those are clearly present here as well. The Renaissance Man is august and ultimate, the telos. He is the master of all things, welcome in all places, and capable of walking in all worlds. He is well-versed in math, science, politics, art, philosophy, theology, and every other possible aspect of knowledge. He has within him the potential to acquire any skill he wishes, and those skills he does not currently have are those only because he has not yet chosen to learn them. As a result, he does not consider different disciplines to be truly separate; he works to draw connections between the most seemingly dissimilar topics and to apply patterns of thinking associated with specific areas of study to intellectual worlds where they would normally not be applied at all. It may come as a surprise that this ideal was particularly popular in Renaissance Europe. An example of one man who pursued it is Leonardo DaVinci, who was in his time a master of art, science, math, and many other disciplines. I've heard it suggested that approaching this ideal is no longer as relevant as it was then, and that argument goes like this: In the time of DaVinci, the study of math, science, and art were all relatively young, and attaining mastery in a wide array of subjects was an attainable goal: mastery required orders of magnitude less knowledge than it does now. To even be considered a master in one of those disciplines in the modern day, taking math as an example, one has to first complete years of elementary and high school, a Bachelor's degree or other program or rigorous study, often a Masters or PhD, and then accomplish something notable in the field. For the arts the path is certainly different, as mastering a physical skill in art takes as much patience and practice today as it did in the Renaissance, but completing that in tandem with many areas of academic study in our current day requires learning and internalizing much more knowledge than was known in Leonardo's time. I don't find this argument particularly compelling. First of all, I don't think the attainment of this ideal is or was ever the point: it's instead the pursuit, and the exercise of it, that matters. Secondly, I don't think attaining what would be considered mastery in a subject is actually that much harder now than it was then. While the amount of total knowledge of math, science, and other academic disciplines has certainly increased since the Renaissance, our methods of teaching have become far more efficient as well. For math we have developed shorthands and strategies to ease learning: PEMDAS, FOIL, long division, trig identities, derivative and integral rules, the list is very long and the product of a massive amount of human labor across generations. For science there are intuitive diagrams, tried and tested experiments to demonstrate properties, methods of memorization, and plenty more (although if it wasn't already clear, science is the area of these three that I know by far the least about). For art, there are well-tested methods of instruction, widespread understanding of the physics of light and color theory, and mature methods of practice to help a learner gain skill more quickly. I also don't think any other intellectual ideal for people is nearly as compelling as the Renaissance Man. I believe the lesson of the ideal to me as an individual is to commit all my energy, and to split it between all things without prejudice; the two alternatives I could think of to this strategy would be to not commit all my energy at all, and not pursue excellence in my daily life, or to commit all my energy to one discipline and focus on mastering it more quickly at the expense of other areas of study. I think the latter is the easier to refute of the two. A jack of all trades, etc. Splitting one's energy between many different areas causes each to augment the others. For me, this applies particularly to coding, math, history, and music: an understanding of gradient descent makes the study of history and politics much more intuitive; an understanding of harmony and composition improves pattern recognition and makes reading code easier and faster; and the study of history is a practice of empathy, making personal and professional relationships and life in general more rewarding. To pursue only one area of study is to deny oneself the opportunity to learn much efficiently and deeply. While the amount of knowledge gained in the chosen field may be greater than if you had split your energy, the total amount of knowledge possessed will be far, far less than if the same time had been divided between disciplines. I think the former argument is a bit more compelling. Why pursue mastery at all? This cuts into some deep stuff, particularly antinatalism for me, since while I am NOT an antinatalist the philosophy does ring in a certain way for me. I did not ask to be born into this world, what responsibility do I have to accumulating knowledge of it, especially if that knowledge is all baseless anyway? (as per Jingle Dance) Why not instead focus on enjoying my time and being present in the moment as much as possible? And here is where we must use some doublethink, for there isn't really a logical refutation to this. Instead, I'd appeal to intuition: while I completely agree that pursuing joy and the present moment is important, the impossibility of reaching or even approaching the Renaissance Man ideal does not lessen its natural power. For helpless as I am against the currents of the world, to still attempt to steer my intellectual ship is to rebel against the universe itself. It is Sisyphus at work: I know I can never master everything, or anything, but still I try, and I try out a humanistic stubbornness and a cosmic responsibility to assert my individuality against the stars. There is no more logical way it can be put: humanity must endeavor to master our world, for although it is all out of our hands, what defines humanity is an unwillingness to act as if that's the case. Another aside, I find that the pursuit of a single discipline is an especially capitalist enterprise. It is man as a part, made to fit the larger machine, rather than a machine unto himself and in tandem with others. It's Pete Seeger's little boxes, even if the pursuit chosen is noble. All people are by nature complex, multifaceted, and possessing unimaginable depth; to work in a way that does not reflect this is to deny one's nature. And another thing on the feasibility of it! Certainly, capitalism cuts the other way, and in our current economy having the time to pursue multiple disciplines is a privilege largely reserved for the wealthy proletariat and the bourgeousie, but a person can still find time, especially a young person! The virtue of pursuing the Renaissance Man is not in how close one is able to get to the ideal - for at the end, none of us can ever approach true mastery of everything - but in the journey, in the energy expended toward that goal. And for young people, putting time into skills is an investment: if one can practice an instrument for ten minutes a day, and not every day but only sometimes, but still is deliberate in their work and intentional in what they do, they will accumulate great skill over years. The key is persistence; it's a marathon, not a sprint. And so those are some of my thoughts on the Renaissance Man ideal. It's the most compelling human ideal for me these days, and I find myself often thinking about it as I go about various activities and consider how I should spend my time. I think that if everyone pursued general mastery - and "general" MUST include mastery of emotional and mental well-being - we would be much better off as a species.