This universal education gave them a grounding from which they could continue into apprenticeship toward becoming a master of a specific field. At this time, universities did not specialize in specific areas, but rather trained students in a broad array of science, philosophy and theology. However, the original Latin word universitas refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc". The idea of a universal education was essential to achieving polymath ability, hence the word university was used to describe a seat of learning. A gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal.
These polymaths had a rounded approach to education that reflected the ideals of the humanists of the time. Many notable polymaths lived during the Renaissance period, a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through to the 17th century that began in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spread to the rest of Europe. Leonardo da Vinci has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". It is used to refer to great thinkers living before, during, or after the Renaissance. The term " Renaissance man" was first recorded in written English in the early 20th century. For use as a title of cultural works, see Renaissance Man. This is expressed in the term Renaissance man, often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic, social, physical, and spiritual.
Įmbodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz has often been seen as a polymath. In the Italian Renaissance, the idea of the polymath was expressed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) in the statement that "a man can do all things if he will". Polymaths include the great scholars and thinkers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, who excelled at several fields in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts. Use in English of the similar term polyhistor dates from the late 16th century. The earliest recorded use of the term in the English language is from 1624, in the second edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton the form polymathist is slightly older, first appearing in the Diatribae upon the first part of the late History of Tithes of Richard Montagu in 1621.
Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy and polyhistory as synonyms. ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them". Von Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies .
In Western Europe, the first work to use the term polymathy in its title ( De Polymathia tractatio: integri operis de studiis veterum) was published in 1603 by Johann von Wowern, a Hamburg philosopher. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.Ī polymath ( Greek: πολυμαθής, polymathēs, "having learned much" Latin: homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Franklin was a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer and political philosopher. Benjamin Franklin is one of the foremost polymaths in history.
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