Book Review-The Polymath By Waqas Ahmed

A few months ago, I started a mission to learn all about polymathy. One of the first things I did was to look up the term ‘polymath’, one of the first things that popped up in Google was the web site for this book: The Polymath by Waqa Ahmed. I approached it with a certain amount of cynicism, just because I am uneasy with this kind of serendipity. I read through the description, felt a bit better, then found it on Amazon, and read through the blurb on Amazon. I decided to buy it on a whim, partly because I was very curious about the topic and partly because I realized that I didn’t know much about the topic of the polymath, even though I have used the term freely to identify myself. The writeup piqued my interest and I figured that it was a worthwhile investment, even if the book wasn’t any good. I am quite pleased I did put forth the investment.

This book is not just another nonfiction book geared towards the general readership. Ahmed had a purpose, a certain evangelical quality to his voice and to his writing. He was proselytizing to the populace regarding the bill of goods we had been sold as members of this culture. He is adamant about the duplicity foisted upon us by the powers that be: that specialization is the sole path toward intellectual fulfillment and excellence, that the only way to be successful is to drill a deep and narrow tunnel towards a blindered vision of the multifaceted world.

The author took a very disciplined and structured plan of attack. The book is written in the form of an argument. The first three chapters were written as an introduction as well a primer to define who Polymaths are, their peculiar qualities and the way they have led their lives. There is an extensive section on the many people from history that the author considers to be polymaths. The author does name drop - the authors drops into this mode quite often in his continuing narrative -  this is name dropping in the very best sense of the phrase. He lists a vast array of people from history who, in his mind, are polymaths. Fortunately for us, due to his cultural background, the author attempts to be multi-cultural and multi-religious in selecting the names that he mentions in this chapter. There are many that I knew or had heard of, there are even more whose name are a total mystery to me. Unfortunately, there are so many that he could not give us a full accounting of their deeds and polymathic prowess. If he did, the book would be a couple of order of magnitude heavier. He does provide an appendix at the end of the book to give a brief synopsis of these polymaths. Perhaps a follow-up tome just relaying the histories of these extraordinary people is in order.

The author then jumps into his main argument, a cogent and systematic attack on the cult of specialization that has pervaded our society, the spell that this mythology has cast over our global culture, and the harm that it has caused our civilization.

He makes some excellent points but at this point of the book, he was preaching to the choir as I was already convinced of his salient arguments.

What follows are two critical chapters to this intellectual call to arms. The chapter on reconditioning the mind and the chapter on building an alternative education system which seek to reverse the cult of specialization and tries to give us a blueprint to establishing a polymathic educational pedagogy.

Regarding the chapter on reconditioning the mind, it is an unqualified success in my humble opinion. The author methodically and systematically laid out the qualities that must pervade our ethos and our thought process for us to change our thinking regarding ourselves and the way we see the world. It was quite inspiring and did cause me to think in completely different terms about my life, my approach to a career and it helped to explain my own ambivalence and uneasiness about what I have done so far. I am someone who blindly followed the specialization route until very recently when I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had not followed my interests nor lived an optimized life. This chapter was a call to arms, a shot of courage, a needed kick in the pants to go pursue my polymath nature.

The chapter on the alternative system however was less successful, mainly because when speaking of reconditioning of my mind, I had full control over everything; whereas when speaking of creating an alternative system, we were speaking of a complex social movement involving changing the status quo and most importantly changing a lot of minds. While this book is a great start, it was still going to be a struggle, a struggle involving a galaxy of unknown variables. Part of the disappointment I felt reading the chapter on alternative system is that while the ideas for systematic changes were well articulated, they were not relayed in enough reality. Perhaps I am looking for a blueprint where a blueprint wasn’t what was called for, but my expectations were not met in full in this regard.

The last two chapters were yet another listing of smart and accomplished polymaths, except these polymaths are in the present, living and breathing examples of what the author has been trying to describe. Some are well known, celebrity polymaths to some degree, others were less so. Regardless of their fame or accomplishments, their stories once again left a need for a continuation of their biographies and stories in another volume. Even though the author intended the chapter to be akin to an intimate conversation with the subjects, the chapter itself fell short of that, as it was obvious that the stories were compendium of third source knowledge. No worries though, they were still quite fascinating.

The last chapter was  the summary of this call to arm, and it’s brevity was much appreciated as the author already laid out his theses ad infinitum through out the rest of the book, so there was no need to restate the salient points.

One note regarding the name-dropping and the credential waving in the book. I was initially put off and bothered by this; as I believe polymaths do what they do to advance their own intrinsic need to attain an understanding of our world and sating their curiosity about the vast stores of knowledge, not for creating a litany of credentials. My understanding of the author’s reason for doing this grew as I dove deeper into the book: it is a part of our culture, credentials are a badge of identification for the capable in a specialization dominant world, it is a token of accomplishment to identify the persons of gravitas, as such it is a convenient tool to communicate to the general audience.

As for my recommendation. For those of us who have been searching for something that would explain our ambivalence and uneasiness when it comes to our lifelong path in the specialized world, this book is required reading. For those who have never questioned their role in this hegemony of specialization, maybe it is time for them to start questioning and this book is an ideal starting point.