Polymaths are back from the dead

Polymaths are back from the dead

Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander NaughtonPolymathy, everyone knows, went extinct in the second half of the 20th century. Only a few intellectual giants—names like Bertrand Russell, John von Neumann, or Michael Polanyi—kept its veins flowing with blood until they themselves finally flatlined, and it did too.Perhaps more was lost than we’d like to admit. After all, the few fragile centuries of the Enlightenment, which was when our…