"The monomaths do not only swarm over a specialism, they also play dirty. In each new area that Posner picks—policy or science—the experts start to erect barricades. “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists tend to develop a specialised vocabulary which creates barriers to entry,” Posner says with his economic hat pulled down over his head. “Specialists want to fend off the generalists. They may also want to convince themselves that what they are doing is really very difficult and challenging. One of the ways they do that is to develop what they regard a rigorous methodology—often mathematical. “The specialist will always be able to nail the generalists by pointing out that they don’t use the vocabulary quite right and they make mistakes that an insider would never make. It’s a defence mechanism. They don’t like people invading their turf, especially outsiders criticising insiders." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

There is definitely a place for polymaths in some form: someone needs to be that people-person guy from Office Space who takes information from two or more disparate groups to form a coherent picture. But the requirement of an agreed lexicon from specialists isn't a defense mechanism: there's a lot of time that can be spent on trying to flesh out terms which could be better spent learning new things. I view it as the difference between working in a place where everyone really knows a programming language so you can concentrate on solving problems using a shared codebase, and constantly bringing on people who only superficially know a language where one spends a large portion of one's time getting those people up to speed. - Mark Trapp

I do think there is a tendency for specialists to overcomplicate things though. Even though I know quite a bit about computers, I still don't know what people are talking about half of the time (and it usually turns out to be something simple). Making up fancy terms makes the work seem so much more magical and important, like you're on the Star Trek or something. Now go realign the tachyon beams with the anti-matter stabilizers :) - Paul Buchheit

Haha. My background is in philosophy, where everything one can talk about probably has an -ism or a -ness or a -itude attached to it. The terms lock out people who only dabble in the hard problems, but they are great shorthand for those who are versed in it. Descartes writes about a philosophy of mind in his Meditations on First Philosophy, and a bunch of people over the course of 300 years refine and expand upon it. Now, I can either try to explain that every time I talk about it to make sure I'm inclusive, or I can just refer to that work as "dualism" and move on. Maybe there's a need for specialists who specialize in translating specialists' work into smaller parts so polymaths can use it to combine with other fields and then translate it to everyone else. Man, that's a lot of people. - Mark Trapp

Me likey - Michael Ehline

"The question is whether their loss has affected the course of human thought. Polymaths possess something that monomaths do not. Time and again, innovations come from a fresh eye or from another discipline. Most scientists devote their careers to solving the everyday problems in their specialism. Everyone knows what they are and it takes ingenuity and perseverance to crack them. But breakthroughs—the sort of idea that opens up whole sets of new problems—often come from other fields." - Clare Dibble

The problem with specialization is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Then if you encounter a screw, and hammering a screw is precisely the wrong thing to do. That's why you need generalists. - Piaw Na

it's axiomatic that: a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until he finally knows everything about nothing - Ervin

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A Heinlein - Bill de hÓra

I have to disagree with you Mark, as also having a background in philosophy, I find it is just as easy to get locked into a semantic argument about some term as it is a possible shortcut to a broader discussion. Most of time time I find people who throw around -isms would prefer not to discuss things deeply because they don't want to ever re-evaluate the basics, it's too frightening, they'd prefer to think they know it. In almost every field, difficult concepts should be able to eventually be whittled down to succinct ideas that anyone can get. Often it is a good measure of the unrefinement of an idea if it can not be defined quickly by a specialist to an intelligence layman. - Ňicķ