[FRIAM] Homo Hiveus

[Steven A Smith]

Dave -

I am sympathetic with your disappointment when tangential topics are
risen in a thread but then lost or dropped.   This is what fresh threads
are made of?   Owen used to harp on blatant threadbending, which is
rampant here, but rather than our having collectively improved
ourselves, I think we mostly have just worn him down.   I used to try
harder to coin a new thread or "subthread" with the form "XXX: was YYY"
but I'm not sure that helped either.   In any case, I welcome this bend
in the Homo Hiveus thread, derived from the previous one.   I think we
are in fact talking about Homo /this-n-that/
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_human_species#List_of_binomial_names>
here or to be recursive /Homo Humanis/ (man the human). 
> I have been told that Leibniz was the last true polymath — knew "everything there was to know." Obviously not true in any literal sense, but likely mostly true in the sense that he had some depth of knowledge in every subject taught at a typical university of his day. But, as several people have pointed out it would be impossible, today, for any single individual to be a true polymath.

I think of the ideal of "knowing everything there is to know" somewhat
differently than that of being a /polymath/ or a /renaissance man/ or in
the vein of my /homo hiveus, homo universalis.  /

When I was first working as a systems engineer (software/hardware) I
believed I knew computers from Schroedinger's equation up through solid
state physics through logic gates and VLSI technology and principles of
OSs and Compilers to algorithms and (pre OO, but implicit OO?)
software/systems design.   Of course, that knowledge, in retrospect
looks like a thin film of swiss cheese or maybe a sierpinski gasket,
defined more by it's *holes* than it's substance.
//

In studying (mildly) this idea I found the Wikipedia entry on
Renaissance Man to defer to Renaissance Humanism, described thus:

    Renaissance humanism was a response to the utilitarian
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarian> approach and what came
    to be depicted as the "narrow pedantry" associated with medieval
    scholasticism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism>.^[2]
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism#cite_note-2>
    Humanists sought to create a Citizenry
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenry> able to speak and write
    with eloquence and clarity and thus capable of engaging in the civic
    life <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_engagement> of their
    communities and persuading others to virtuous
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue> and prudent
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence> actions. This was to be
    accomplished through the study of the /studia humanitatis
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitas>/, today known as the
    humanities <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities>: grammar
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar>, rhetoric
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric>, history
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History>, poetry
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry>, and moral philosophy
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_philosophy>.

My experience at Los Alamos was that folks trained in the hard sciences
often aspired to have broad knowledge and capabilities.   Some merely
*affected* such breadth but in such a rich environment, this often did
not stand.   At dinner parties, it was not uncommon to hear someone
trying to bluff their way through some topic they *aspired* to be
experts on, only to be confronted with the fact that someone within
earshot was likely *one of* the world-class experts on the topic.   I
was humbled by this many times. 

<tangential anecdote> The most acute being when I was fresh to LANL and
attending the first Evolution, Games, and Learning Workshop formal
dinner at Los Brazos (now Gabriels). 

I was standing in line for the buffet and asked by a shorter elderly
gentleman with a pink face and wispy white locks of hair, lots of silver
and turquoise (as did his wife), "what do you do?" or similar?  I (only)
had a BS in Physics/Math and lots of CS courses and had come to work on
the Proton Storage Ring but was quite proud of the practical knowledge I
was gaining at this (then) cutting-edge experimental physics facility.  
After blathering on for 10 minutes about everything I knew about
elementary particle physics (not that much really, just enough to be
semi-competent at my job), I asked him what he did, and he said he was
"a university professor" and then I asked him what he taught and he
replied "Physics" but then added that he mostly did research.  I asked
him his name, hoping I might be familiar with some of his
publications.   It was Murray Gell-Mann... who from my point of view
*was* not only *all of elementary particle physics* but also *most of* 
String Theory and Quantum Chromodynamics at the time. </anecdote> 

> So what might a "modern polymath" actually be? My idiosyncratic understanding begins a thousand years ago when I was in 2nd grade and reading A.E. van Vogt's SF novel, "Voyage of the Space Beagle." The hero of the book was a "Nexialist," a new profession and someone who could solve (most often existential for the space ship) problems that the various specialists (physicists, chemists, psychologists, ...) could not.
>
> Fast forward a bit and another SF novel, "Rite of Passage," by Alexi Panshin wherein two more new professions were described: "ordinologist," someone who knew everything there was to know in a particular domain, had it all sorted, organized, and thoroughly indexed; and a "synthesist" who could wander from one ordinologists domain to another and note that this idea or concept or practice would be really useful in this other domain.
>
> A final SF novel, "Polymath," by John Brunner added the notion that a polymath was someone with 'sufficient' knowledge to "make the right decision with imperfect and incomplete information."
>
> A final root was James Burke's TV series, "Connections."

The genre of science fiction certainly has it's share of examples of the
"Competent Man" character-trope along with his cousin "Jack of all
Trades".   Such characters are particularly handy as protagonists,
antagonists, and supporting characters in Post Apocalyptic Dystopias as
well as the frontierish Space Opera.   I can acknowledge that my own
aspirations to be broadly capable and well rounded is probably as rooted
in reading to much Science Fiction as a kid as having grown up in rural
contexts where many modern services either hadn't penetrated to our
locale, or were prohibitively  expensive.   Folks "had to make do", and
they did.  

<tangent> As an early flight enthusiast, I was totally enthralled by the
idea that the first commercially viable airplanes (first 20-30 years?)
were designed somewhat differently than the automobile.  Firstly, a
failure during flight (or worse takeoff/landing) had higher
consequences, leading to more robust materials, design, and redundancy
(dual magnetos/plugs, etc.) but secondly since the average biplane of
the time was likely to be put to use away from modern conveniences... In
particular a "barnstormer" pilot or "areal explorer" had to understand
not only how to operate the plane, but also meteorology, navigation and
enough mechanical understanding to obtain "local help".   Competency
(and tools/materials) in Blacksmithing, Cobblering, and Sail/Tarp making
would go a long way and were still widely found in the countryside of
any (semi?) developed country.  My first (only) airplane was a 1947
Luscombe Silvaire (two-place taildragger with a 60hp engine) and was the
last commercial airplane to have a fabric wing.   The frame/fuselage was
aluminum which was already a very well understood industrial material
but there were *many* issues with understanding whether the airframe was
"aging" well (corrosion and fatigue).   It was anecdotally described to
me that the "classic" wood/fabric airframes were *much* easier to
inspect (and repair). </tangent>

BTW... I'm a fan of Brunner  and Van Vogt.  In spite of their work
having become painfully dated (esp VV), they both addressed some very
interesting and broadly important issues in their work.   "Nexialist"
and "Ordinologist" are new terms to me...  but nicely apt to this
conversation. 

> From these roots, the ideal that an individual possess an integrated body of knowledge, transcending traditional specialization silos, that enabled informed and useful communication and exchange of understanding across those same specializations. The key term here is "integrated" something that is impossible to achieve in a modern educational system, even in the most ardent 'liberal arts' institution.
>
> A practical influence on the modern polymath idea comes from Business, the Applied Arts (especially architecture, graphical, and product design), and to a far lesser extent, software development. In all cases it is noted that most work product comes from teams, not individuals. And a real problem with teams is the fact that they are comprised of silo-ed specialists.
>
> Even if there were a specific profession like Nexialism, putting such an individual on each team to facilitate cross-disciplinary communication would not be very effective. Instead it is essential that each member of the team possess sufficiently wide, and integrated, knowledge that they can follow (to a significant extent, but not completely) the contributions of others outside of their own narrow specialization. Everyone needs the ability to recognize how ideas or concepts in other domains might serve as metaphors for solving problems or gaining insights into their own domain.
I can attest from my own experience that teams *do* benefit well from
having at least one "synthesist" and in fact often was promoted myself
to "lead" a team simply because I demonstrated that quality, when in
fact the team might have been better served by someone with better
organizational skills and patience for bureaucracy, leaving me to my own
strength of wandering between subprojects, asking the right questions
and sometime offering useful "outsider" solutions.   By the time I was
done with working on teams that I didn't form, I realized that I should
*never* accept a leadership role unless there was a *stronger*
synthesist already on the team.   While I *could* provide that role to
some extent as  manager,  the other tasks involved usually undermined
that role.
> The production of such individuals, who were also tier one software developers, was the goal of the program at Highlands.

I'm not a big sports fan, but from my layman's perspective, a good
systems/software team is a bit more like a baseball team than some of
the other team sports.   A good management team is a bit like the
pitcher/catcher team who hopefully keep the rest of the team from having
to exercise their "defensive skills".   Each team member needs to have
very solid abilities at throwing and catching, but it is the hitting and
running that "scores the points".    Your program at Highlands might
have been more like a farm-team in some ways, providing good, well
rounded experiences to prepare them for entering the 'big show" as tier
one developers?

- Steve


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