So why be a specialist? Why are specialists so desirable?
There is an obvious answer: With so much information to be digested for any one given subject, one has to specialise in order to understand that topic thoroughly. There simply isn't time enough to thoroughly explore more than one area of knowledge. And if one wishes to be taken seriously, and to speak with authority on a subject, one must not only specialise but be seen to specialise.
The obvious answer, though, is misleading in more than one way. Firstly, it assumes that specialising increases understanding, but whilst a specialist has a deeper knowledge of a subject, unless they can also put that knowledge into context, they risk becoming blinkered. You can only put your knowledge into context by looking outside your specialisation, both at the topics abutting yours and those further away, i.e. you can only really become a good specialist by also incorporating a degree of polymathy into you work.
Secondly, there is the misconception that new ideas come simply from details knowledge of your field. In fact, most creativity comes from around the boundaries of a discipline where fields of expertise overlap, it comes from the edges of the known not the comfortable centre. These days that overlap seems to be achieved mainly by the coming together of specialists at those boundaries - a sort of collective polymathy. But however you do it, innovation requires polymathy.
Once, though, polymathy was not so unusual. Scholars studied astronomy, biology, natural history, literature, art, whatever took their fancy. From Ptolemy to Leonardo da Vinci to Erasmus Darwin, the terminally curious felt free to explore the world around them without having a set of artificial boundaries foisted upon them.
Scholars then knew that there was inherent value in polymathy, but that attitude now seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. Specialisation is seen as far more desirable than polymathy. Indeed, most people don't seem to know what to do with a polymath when they come across one, searching for a way to squeeze them into their regimented and compartmentalised view of the world, trying to find them an appropriate pigeonhole instead of letting them flit from perch to perch within the dovecote.
Yet polymaths bring their important abilities to the table - the ability to see the big picture, to juxtapose previously incongruent ideas, to create new relationships between disparate data sets. These skills are essential to the development of everything from science and technology to literature to art, yet often the kinds of people best suited to such innovative roles are stifled by the pigeonholers rather than being encouraged to spread their wings and study a multiplicity of subjects.
Chocolate and Vodka
Compare: '... people who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas.' Social Origins of Good Ideas, Ronald S Burt, University of Chicago (see this earlier posting).
