Polymaths like Alberti constantly strove to attain their optimal state of being. Optimality is the fullest realisation of one's potential; it is different from pursuing an illusory ‘perfection’. Maslow said that ‘what a man can be, he must be’ and that one only attains a state of self-actualisation when ‘one becomes everything that one is capable o

To polymathise, therefore, is to emancipate oneself from such overwhelming dependence and, in a sense, to pursue true freedom. Instead of trusting those unpredictable elements, one ought to (to quote Emerson) ‘Trust Thyself’.

More than ‘jacks of all trades’, the likes of Moore and Plimpton were instead ‘masters of variety’. Spreading thin does not necessarily make one any less polymathic. Each experience, however brief, and especially if it is in a field completely new to the person, adds to his roundedness and overall personal, professional, intellectual, physical and

this book weaves together a narrative of history and a vision for the future that seeks to disrupt this prevailing system of unwarranted ‘hyper-specialisation’. Indeed, it reveals that the true specialist is actually a polymath.