My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 4, #25, January 11, 1999

ON ORBITING THINGS

To be a cowboy learn how not to be an astronaut
To be a doctor learn how not to be the president
To be the center of the universe don't orbit things.

the Loud Family

I was just reading about some of our early and important American books--works by Ben Franklin, Noah Webster, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau--and was struck again by how many of our founders and writers were polymaths, people with incredibly eclectic interests and broad knowledge of their world. Jefferson was a political theorist, a farmer, an architect. He founded a university and the Library of Congress, and bought half a continent for the United States (almost as much, I suspect, for the sheer pleasure of learning about its wild life as for its economic benefit to the country).

Franklin was known as much for his contributions to the study of electricity as he was for Poor Richard's Almanac and his success as a diplomat for our fledgling republic. Webster, who created the first American spelling manual well before he published his dictionary, also practiced law, edited a magazine and newspaper, and successfully crusaded for the establishment of copyright. Thoreau's best known works, Civil Disobedience and Walden, explored history, political theory, and natural science.

Men with such breadth of interests and knowledge may have been uncommon even then, but they seem even less common now. Who can you think of to match them? Perhaps Stephen J. Gould. Anybody else?

I am wondering why that is. It is not, I think, because people are more limited these days, more narrowly and boringly focused on their work. So many of us in our non-work hours are passionate mountain climbers, Civil War re-enacters, birdwatchers; some of us spend our off-work hours as amateur gardeners, artists, or writers, or use our spare time in libraries, classes, museums, and discussion groups, learning about something that excites us, be it family history or Mark Twain or antique furniture. Very few of us, it seems to me, would choose to be defined exclusively by what we do to make a living. Many of us, given the time and money, might be Jeffersonian in the breadth of our interests.

What is it that has changed, then?

Perhaps the boundaries. In the time of Franklin and Jefferson, only 200 years ago, so little was actually known and understood that the contributions of amateurs were not only welcome but invaluable. Amateurs played with physics and astronomy, tinkered with machines, discovered stars and explored continents. Now, I suspect, a Benjamin Franklin might not be taken seriously. Now credentials matter, as do the institutions that sponsor the researcher--do you doubt a scientist from Harvard would automatically be granted more credibility than putterers like Franklin or even Edison?

Nor would Jeffersonian eclecticism be honored in the professional or academic world. It's not just that historians who chose to write about biology would be pooh-poohed by biologists; their biological treatises would get them no recognition among historians, either, nor would they count toward tenure. The other members of the English department at Columbia never quite knew what to make of the murder mysteries their colleague Carolyn Heilbrun wrote under the name Amanda Cross, and scholars in the business of criticism or theory look down their noses at fellow professors who write sonnets or commit actual art.

But it is also true that the body of knowledge has increased dramatically in those 200 years. Just a hundred years ago, there was a professor at the University of Iowa who taught both chemistry AND biology. Think about that--it's only been a hundred years since it was possible for one person to master all that was generally known about both fields. Since then, every decade has seen an exponential increase in the amount of published research in science, medicine, history, religion, cross-cultural studies. Who now would even claim to be an expert in all of chemistry? Wouldn't chemists modestly hem and haw and say, "actually, I'm just an analytical chemist"? Wouldn't biology professors say, "well, really, I only know zoology" or even "I study frogs"?

The training time for doctors and lawyers and other professionals has steadily increased over the years, so that they now have to spend 20-25 years of their lives in school just learning what is already known about their disciplines, let alone keeping up with new research or conducting their own. Don't you wonder that any of them have time and energy left over to devote to hobbies or music or good works?

The choices we make limit us--to be a cowboy, you DO have to rule out being an astronaut, because getting better and better at roping or space walking is what helps you get ahead. The more specialized you become, the more difficult it is to go back to the path not taken. Michael Jordan might be rich enough and confident enough to try playing baseball, but he can't make his aging body, precisely and lovingly honed for basketball, perform anywhere near as beautifully and routinely at a different sport, with different bodily demands, that he has not practiced on a daily basis.

I think the nature of our work has changed, too. In order just to keep up with changes in our fields--all the new machines and databases and program languages, all the new laws and regulations--we have to focus ever more narrowly on our specializations. Eventually, I think, the pace of change wears us out, drains us of energy. We may be working the same number of hours per week, but those hours of running just to stay in place demand more of us mentally. There may simply be less mind and energy available by the time we get home.

At least, that's what's happening to me. I think I have come to the end of my ability to adjust to constant change at work. I have fit my life around my work for a long time, and now I find there aren't enough hours in the day, nor enough mental energy, for me to work full-time and do it well, and still be able to read, think, write, socialize, and be part of my community's life. In the words of one of Edmund Crispin's characters, I want to "spend my life trying to make what I enjoy doing, and the things people are willing to pay me for, overlap a bit more."

I don't want to burrow deeper and deeper into just one little field of knowledge and embed myself in the center of that universe; I want to orbit things, circle around, see everything there is to learn about. Nor do I want to wait until I'm 65 to try to become, in my small non-genius way, the kind of unleashed, wide-ranging intelligence Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were.

That's why I'm going to quit my job at the end of June and see if I can live on my wits and skills, and make my work fit around my life for a change. Wish me luck.

And if you happen to know anyone who's in the market for a polymath, let me know, OK?