Educating Polymaths - A Conversation with Aksinya Samoylova

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

So first, the essence of every polymath is philosophy, because you have to think, contemplate, philosophize. My vision is that we have to learn more strategically, conceptually, and more solid. But this solidness goes away because in the school, children learn for testing.

Hi, my name's Tim Logan and this is the Future Learning Design Podcast brought to you in partnership with Notosh. This week I'm speaking with Aksinya Samoylova, who is both a pioneering human resources professional and a passionate progressive educator. She saw that versatility is often overlooked or ignored in the hiring and management process, and that the same issue is endemic in international educational practices. Axinnia felt compelled to investigate polymathy and how it impacts education and work, and the result was her book, Why Polymaths: How Multi-Specialists Revolutionize the Way We Learn, Work, and Live. Axinnia's keynotes and public talks, delivered in English and German, draw on a unique combination of her original research compiled over many years and her passion for philosophy, psychology, history, science, Asian studies, Indian classical dance. She is fluent in 4 languages and knows 3 others at different levels. As a graduate in linguistics and pedagogy, she created a concept for a polymathic approach to learning for both individuals and educational institutions. She also manages a polymath agency, the first talent acquisition service in the world, to specialize in working with companies seeking multidisciplinary professionals.

Firstly, thank you for joining me. I'm so happy to be able to talk to you about this, this world of polymathy.

Thank you, Tim Logan. That's an honor.

Perhaps an unfamiliar term to a lot of people, but what I was so interested, and one of the reasons I reached out to you initially was I feel, and I'm sure you agree, that there is so many implications for what we're doing in education now and the way we're thinking about education, hopefully rethinking education that we can learn from the history of polymathy and from the, all of these topics around what it means to be a polymath and how do we develop polymaths. So reading your book on Why Polymaths was just, just a brilliant learning experience for me. And now I'm just really excited to be able to dig into some of the detail with you. What I thought we would start with is just, cuz obviously I'd love to get into some of the definitions and shared understandings around what we mean by a polymath, but perhaps it would just be a, a friendlier and more kind of personal way in just to talk a little bit about your own journey and, and why you became particularly initially interested in the world of polymaths. And I loved reading some of your personal stories in the book about that. So maybe perhaps we could start with that, some of when you were young. What was your initial interest in this magical world of polymathy?

Yeah, it's not that it was my interest. Of course, I obviously had no idea about polymaths, as most of the people, because this, the term exists in, in English now. Okay. It has some Greek origin, but in general, it's not commonly known. And in many languages, there is no equivalent whatsoever. So like in German, there is this word which means like a universal— it's more like has an academic touch.

Yeah.

Also same as in Russian, it's more like an erudite, a person who just knows a lot. But the polymath, you can't translate directly into these languages. It's not the same.

Yeah. Interesting.

So in many languages, polymathy is not known as what we mean under it today. Let's put it like that. So it's mostly, they were learned men, mostly men.

Yeah. That's something I want to ask you about later, but we'll come back to that.

Yeah. And they were mostly really knowledgeable in many fields, but more like academic. But, um, getting back to my childhood, yes, I just only reflecting on my childhood, I realized that in fact there were 3 things which had a huge impact on my kind of understanding of polymathy that, I mean, I was an avid reader, like I was a typical bookworm. I counted that by the age of 20, I've read about 3,000 books and I was absolutely obsessed with reading. So you can imagine, and I read, there was one fairy tale from Persian fairy tale, but it's coming from the Bukhara region. It's a Middle Asia. And it was about a prince who was kidnapped and before he was kidnapped, his father said, okay, you're a prince, but you have to learn something, not only some like academic stuff, but you have to know a craft you need. That. Yeah. And he learned how to make these Persian carpets, you know, this beautiful, uh, very artistic. And when he was kidnapped, he offered them that he would craft a beautiful carpet, and he implemented a message of where he was in this carpet. And he said, you go to my father and sell it to him and get big money. And in this carpet, it was his location where he was kept. So actually, this craft saved his life because then, of course, the king sent his the soldiers there and they redeemed him. So this impressed me so much, you can't believe. I don't know why exactly out of all these 3,000 books this story made such a great impact on me because I felt that if something happens, for instance, what do I actually know? What I would do in this situation? And then I always thought of my sister who is an opera singer. Then I thought, okay, if she would be kidnapped, she could just start singing and they will redeem her because she— her voice is absolutely magical. And then, yeah, so somehow I, I felt this need because also being an intellectual person from my childhood, I was very philosophical and, and all that. I felt that it's probably needed to have some balance in other fields. So this, now reflecting on that, I realized that that was my initial feeling, that one thing is not enough And then there were two painters who impressed me also, not only as painters but also actually as polymaths. Peter Paul Rubens, famous artist who not everyone knows that he was a great businessman and a great diplomat. So he actually played a big role in his times because the Spanish Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with a number of diplomatic missions of a high level that, yeah. So that impressed me the most because I was already, since the age of 10, I was interested in history of arts and I was fascinated. Why? I mean, how could he do that? So somehow I remember that the ability to juggle many commitments fascinated me. Yeah.

And so, so I mean, we're kind of meandering towards the definition because obviously what we've heard from your own story is this idea of being, you know, expert or highly able in, in multiple fields, right? Is that a very rough definition of a polymath, but how would you add to that or make that more precise?

Yeah. Happy to make it more precise by using somebody else's definition. Yeah. Because of course, like officially there is no clear definition. I mean, people still argue. And I stick to Michael Araki, who is a key polymathic scholar right now. And he works works on developing like theory of polymathy. And I love his very simple and clear-cut idea that there are three polymathic dimensions: the breadth, the depth, and the integration. So the breadth refers to knowledge that is wide-ranging, covering different and often disparate domains. Depth means that this knowledge is significantly profound, and this is absolutely critical. Whether it refers to technical, epistemic, or experiential knowledge. And integration, which is like the gem of the gem, means that this knowledge is significantly integrated and interrelated. So it manifests from through synergizing networks. So a combination of ideas from seemingly disparate domains. Yeah. So like it can be, you know, on a practical level, it can be like You may have like 2 fields and 3 subfields, subdomains. So there are like bigger domains and within these domains there are subdomains.

Are you using the word domain there as equivalent or synonymous with discipline?

Specialization? No, no, no. I would say a specialization within one discipline. Like for instance, for instance, you can say even we don't think, but in fact, like a poet. Has different skills than a writer. They are like poetry and like novel writing, yeah, or non-fiction writing. They are absolutely different things. And lots of writers can never write poetry, and lots of poets can never write novel. And so here is, I would call them two different domains because they are within one field, like creative writing, but they're very different according to the skills they need.

Yeah, okay. And so there's, I mean, people listening largely working in education will start to hear, I think, real resonance with those ideas of breadth and depth and integration because those are key aspects if you're designing curriculum, if you're running schools, if you're working with learning, if you're a classroom teacher, they're really important concepts. So I find that's a really interesting connecting point. So I'd love to come back to that as we go a bit more deeply into what this means for education. But before we go there, I think there's so many interesting little offshoots of the idea of identifying polymaths because one of the things I've seen from your book and from other books around polymathy is that there's lots of examples and biographies of polymaths. I mean, I've heard you say and others say that actually there were real significant drivers of social, cultural, political evolution of progress of history, if you like, because they were such key figures. So why is that they're so common in history when you start digging in, but actually now it's not even particularly a very familiar concept to us. What's happened?

Yeah, it's quite easy to explain.

Good.

From the very beginning when people started like shaping themselves as humans, they were very polymathic, obviously, because you, the nomads, no, they had to explore new areas all the time. They had to look for new plants to eat and new animals to catch, new environment setting. So they were highly polymathic as such because they had to know everything. So they there was no specialization in this time. And basically specialization appeared with the arrival of the end of Neolithic, the agricultural revolution. It means that people started growing crops, you know, all this domestication. And in this agricultural society, out of 10 people, one could allow not to work. Only one. But this one concentrated on gaining knowledge and on creating new knowledge. So basically, that was the great shift in culture that some people could allow themselves not to work and to start focusing on forging new knowledge. So these people became very polemics because you have to cover all the aspects. There was, of course, no idea of disciplines. Everyone did everything. So it was for, for learning people, it was natural to be polymaths. For not learning people, so for farmers, for craftsmen, for traders, it was not important to be polymaths. So they were kind of specialized.

And they were, they were largely what, religious leaders, tribal leaders?

We're covering now the 8,000 years. So there were different periods.

Yeah.

And depends on the culture, you know, some cultures they had more emphasis on religious religious leaders, some less. So, but anyway, they were privileged at some point. So these people could learn and they had a very holistic approach to learning, obviously, because they were not disciplined. Disciplines arrived much, much later. And so basically we should understand that polymathy is a natural trait for everyone because it's inborn genetically, you know, like all our ancestors were like that, but not for the last 8,000 years. And now when we take to the recent history, there is this period of 150 years which started to somehow in the middle of the 19th century where the world increasingly took to specialization. Yeah, I mean, absolutely took to specialization. So the idea of polymathy died out. I don't know, have you, in my book, have you read about Alexander von Humboldt? For me, it's one of the most fascinating polymaths in history, an absolutely outstanding person who was such a bright star. He was the second person known after Napoleon, you know, because he actually explored Americas as a scientist and he brought to Europe all the scientific material of his studies and he was lecturing around, everybody loved him. He was absolutely like the bright shining star.

Celebrity.

Yeah.

In Europe. It's absolute celebrity of intellectual celebrity. He was loved and cherished and everything. He was one of the first or even the first person to talk about, for instance, climate change, you know? He was telling about environmental impact of people cutting trees and all that. So he made discoveries in so many disciplines, which were still, we're still using them. We, there are hundreds of like biological or geographical toponyms called after Humboldt, for instance. Yeah. So his impact was so huge when you, when you read in his heritage, it's absolutely like one of the most impactful people in history. And what happened shortly after he died? He was absolutely forgotten, not because he was so insignificant, but because people say, okay, that is irrelevant today. Today is relevant. We have to become specialists. So people like him are kind of not our heroes anymore. So now luckily he's getting his fame, is getting back. And, and I mean, he and his brother, they— this absolute unique story in the whole of humanity because he and his brother both polymaths, they're both highly impactful because his brother Wilhelm von Humboldt is the one who created the university concept which we use today. Like every university works like that. So apart from creating the whole like German system of education and, and all that. So it's one of my absolutely, you know, loves for it.

Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there's a strong link there with the kind of development of the economic structures, the market economy and the political economy in relation to what you were saying about agricultural revolution. But just to bring it back to the point about specialization that you were talking about, because I think that's so interesting because now, I mean, you know, again, even to bring it right back to education right now, we're obsessed with specialization and it's such a strong force within education in terms of young people making decisions about what they study, about the way that we structure curriculum. It's the way that we talk about knowledge. There's so much that's about specialism, but, but actually what I'm hearing you saying is that that development of specialization has almost made it taboo to talk about being a polymath because almost being a polymath is seen as, it's like in English, the phrase jack of all trades, master of none.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It, it's exact, this saying exists in many languages because for common people who were like not learned men, not academicians, yeah, for them it was better to be a specialist always, you know, like if you're Smith, then remain a Smith, you know, if you're a farmer, remain a farmer, if you switch, then what can you do well? So this is, I think it has a long history, the saying, it's not, that's why, you know, it took me also time to realize that there were basically two groups of people. So the ones who were initially trained to, to become polymaths because it was the learning system was like that. And the ones who were trained to become masters in one field. So this specialization is not new as such. It has been at least around since 8,000 years. It's like that some people were polymathic because they were privileged to learn, to study. So the question is about privilege is, by the way, a very interesting one because, you know, my editor, who is wonderful, you know, when I ask him what is his conclusion after reading all these interviews, because I have 12 interviews of modern polymaths, and he said, you know, after reading all that, I can say, but they were all privileged. Although I had people from India, from Brazil, from Mexico, from UK, some European countries. So I really tried to cover the whole world, so they represent different cultures. But he said, but look, they were all privileged to learn as children, to learn what they wanted. So it means that all these people had access to better and more disparate education.

Yeah, I think there's a really interesting piece there that I've heard Daniel Schmachtenberger talk about, talking about the role of aristocratic tutoring in the development of polymaths or the development of genius and expertise. Because as you say, the privilege allows, you know, people like Aurelius, you know, or Michel de Montaigne, or, you know, all these different people from history and, you know, probably—

Yeah, but Humboldt, you know, Humboldt, they were home They were aristocratically homeschooled.

But absolutely aristocratic because homeschooled in our sense today means something rather different, whereas homeschooled in those periods of history was much more about bringing in the most learned people as the teachers at home. But I also had a question around the, because quite a lot of the explanations for polymaths so far have sounded quite sociocultural, right? In relation to the organization of the society or the culture. What about the kind of more psychological explanations? Because one of the quotes I liked from the book was that there was archetypal polymathic patterns, first curiosity, then thirst for knowledge, then mastery, and finally integration. Yeah. And I think, and obviously there's sociocultural influences there, but that's, there's quite a lot of individual, that kind of drive to learn, that curiosity, that thirst for knowledge.

Yeah.

How much of that do you think in, you know, in your view, from your research comes from individual dispositions.

Let's put it like this. If we speak about the great historical figures, people who really had the most impact on the, on the history and on knowledge, history of knowledge and everything and all social development, they all were what I call in my book also born polymaths. Born polymaths, it means that you have a huge intrinsic drive to explore new things and you would do it anyway. Either you have a great educational setup or you don't have a great setup, you will get it. Like two examples of, at least which are very famous, like the one of greatest Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, whose story is legendary that he walked from the north of Russia. He walked by foot in the snow for 3 months. Just because he wanted to learn. And then he became such a prolific polymath, you can't imagine. So no conditions, like he learned some basic reading and writing only from some priests and that's all what he knew. But then his quest for knowledge was so huge that he really overcame any circumstances. So that was an example. Benjamin Franklin is one of the best examples. He was coming from a poor family, no educational, like absolutely no privileges. So they're great autodidacts. The people who became great, they had amazing intrinsic motivation. Not to become great, no, but to learn.

To learn, exactly.

This curiosity for and drive to learn. Okay, I haven't become great at all, but I can say I know what it means. And I'm sure you are definitely the same type that this drive absolutely drives me mad when I want to learn something. Something. I really have such a hunger for knowledge. So this is— these people, they will become polymaths absolutely without any outside conditions. Yeah. Then there are people whom I call latent polymaths. These people, they need environment, they need more support because they have the polymathic traits and often they are quite well expressed. But then the school system kills it all. So we know that story.

Yeah.

Yeah. So unfortunately, so normally, like, after the primary school already, they are starting understanding that, okay, so it functions this way, so I can't do much. And they lose interest to many things. So basically, these people need support. So this is my main— in my educational strategy, this is my main focus group because this is a hugely potential group, but they need support. They need polymathic educational approach, like, uh, the so-called born polymaths, they don't need any, I mean, they will profit from this support, but also without any support they will make it.

Yeah.

And this group needs, and then of course I met some people in my life who were surprisingly monomathic. So surprisingly to me because I can't understand how can one person be so happy with one only single discipline. But there are people like that and good. I mean, okay. So it's their path and they become specialists in something and they also, of course, they can discover something and they do this. What they often not good at, of course, they can't synthesize. Yeah. So basically their discoveries, even if they make discoveries, but they are mostly done in some narrow, narrow thing. And this is something very particular, especially in science, it can be very useful. Yeah. But then—

Lots of depth, not a lot of breadth or Integration.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the two other things are missing. So this is kind of a very rough divide into three groups, kind of.

That's, no, that's fascinating. So I mean, I would love to, maybe we can get into some of that then, because I think, you know, we've really explored the idea of what a polymath is and some of the kind of historical trends around it. But also one of the things that's particularly interesting to me about the idea of a polymath is the integration piece between different domains and that connection and synthesis-making capacity, because as we know, and you know, you hear it everywhere, but it's, it's also very, very present and, and important to repeat that we are facing deeply complex challenges as a human race.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and therefore, in order to respond to that, it's really going to require perhaps a different set of skills and competencies and abilities around connecting domains of knowledge in order to respond intelligently and, you know, reasonably to the complex challenges that we're facing. So I think that's my personal interest in it. And therefore, what can education actually do to develop some of these traits and skills and dispositions around polymathy with this bigger mission, I suppose, of helping young people prepare for a future in that deeply interconnected and deeply complex and fast-changing world. Again, all of those things are just, they're so often repeated that they become meaningless, but they are also deeply true. So what can education do is that, you know, so that's a big question. So I'd, but, but specifically I'd love to get into some of the things around the breadth and the depth and the integration and the things you go through in the book around self-directed learning. And there's some really fascinating different and systems thinking. So where are some of the things that but maybe let's start first from the perspective of what you've learned from homeschooling and then, you know, what the kind of model of learning approach to learning, and then perhaps then we can explore the implications for more formal education settings.

Yeah. Thank you for leading that to homeschooling because it's exactly was my immediate, you know, instant answer to your question because like what I'm facing, like for example, recently I've been doing a lot of career choice counseling. For teenagers, what I discovered that the main problem with all these wonderful teenagers, yeah, who are at least coming to me, what I see, great potentials, but they have no time to explore.

Yeah, absolutely.

And this lack of time, I just don't know how to compensate it because like, for instance, like my daughter has to attend school now. Yeah, there was an unfortunate turn of events that led us to that. I hope it's not for long, but at least this year she has to finish. And so she attends school from 8 till half past 4, almost till 5. Yeah, it means all the productive day which normally we would cover in homeschooling with fascinating stuff, very productive, all the doing what— I mean, when I see what she's doing there, you know, I want to cry, you know. It's, it's like nothing. It's nothing compared to what one can do within this time. And then she comes home, of course she's tired. And then of course she can't get to bed before 11 or 12 because she wants to do her stuff. Because she's used to doing, to being free in her creativity, to learning what she wants to learn. And lots of children say, I'm asking them, so what do you feel? What is your like interest in this and that? I don't know because I don't have time. Yeah, exactly. So here is my main argument against the educational system because it's robbing kids their time and it's ineffective. And every polymath, believe me, I went through minimum 200 biographies, very detailed. And what I found, all of these polymaths, they had time in their childhood Somehow or other, they had these moments where they were absolutely free to explore. And I don't know how to do this within school system. You really need to give the freedom. You know, I'm asking also in my counseling, I'm asking children, what was your favorite pastime when you were a child? And here some people really are stuck, you know, because they see that all their life they were guided. They had no choice to be themselves, to see what, what my actual interest in life is. Because you're all the time kindergarten, then primary school, and, and then of course it's gymnasium on all this level, middle school and high school. It's, it's a nightmare. All the time fulfilling instructions and learning what they want you to learn. But where, where is yourself? Exactly.

Yeah, I find it interesting that there's this physical, like, nourishment metaphor that we always use about thirst for knowledge and hunger, right? So you used it a few times, and it was in the quote I used. And then you, you can't— you cannot understand whether you are thirsty or hungry if people keep feeding you food that you don't want, right?

That's it. You don't want, you're fed already. So, so why should you? Exactly like this ancient Chinese, I think, this story now about the of tea, like the master said, I can't fill in your cup because it's already full. So what? Exactly, that's it. Yes, so, so, and for me, that's why my primary advice is give your child time, free time. Find it, I don't know, do whatever. Sometimes just skip school, just let like one day in one month skip school, just don't go there, just be yourself. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, of course I understand it can be them, But sometimes, sometimes also like holidays, they are fully planned. You have to learn things you like missed. Yeah. For instance, like you're lacking somewhere, lagging behind. Then also you want to take some trips. Okay. Trips are educational in a way, but it's again organized by your parents. So basically all the time people are in organized structures. So they can't do anything.

No, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And one of the things about that I find so interesting is that the discussion very, very quickly gets polarized. So you start talking about freedom to explore for young people and you very quickly enter a discussion around self-directed learning and democratic schooling or homeschooling. And that's going to really quite a particular extreme where that happens and with some very, very good outcomes, right? With some less good outcomes as well, because we don't hear about those stories., right? But the polarized discussion is unhelpful because we then start talking about, well, but don't children need structure? And don't they need guidance from people who have been around the block a few times and understand how the world works? And of course that's the role of an educator, but the polarized discussion between structure and freedom doesn't help because what we actually have right now is an overstructured situation, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's like we are overstructured, that's true. And I'm, you know, I'm not, for instance, like you maybe, Cyprus, but I'm not for unschooling. Yeah, although, although there are people who are absolutely able to be unschooled completely, there are people like that, but they are maybe like 1%. Yeah, for instance, even with my daughter, although she's an absolutely clear self-learner, but still I give a lot of guidance to her. And what I do is I give fascination for knowledge. She loves learning, she is fascinated, but still what I do more, I introduce her to lots of fascinating subjects, fields, and practical stuff. So it's kind of, I believe that guidance is important. And I was suffering, you know, I was suffering as a teenager. I know that I lacked guidance. There was almost nobody. And I always wanted to have somebody, in fact, you know. I needed somebody to guide me. But because my parents, they were busy and they're quite intelligent people, but not in these fields which were interesting for me, you know.

Yeah. But just to pick up on something you said earlier in passing, you used the word autodidact, right?

Yeah.

You know, for people who don't know, it means means just basically you're teaching yourself, right? But what you're saying there, and I think, I think this is really important, that we often leave people to self-learn how to self-learn, if you see what I mean. So we actually— there are some effective ways to learn that, that experience can tell us. And so actually, to become an autodidact, to become a better autodidact, to be able to teach yourself better, that could be useful to be guided in that process.

Yes, absolutely. Of the skills and or the methodology or new tools.

Exactly.

Not skills, but tools. Exactly. Yeah, this guidance is essential and it's an inspiration for knowledge and inspiration for personalities. This is what I also did for my daughter and nephew and in general everyone. I always try to organize meetings with inspiring adults just to show them how people can be actually, no? Absolutely. And this is crucial. I mean, we are social beings and of course, if somebody is a great self-learner, it's great, but still you need people around. Yes.

And I mean, I always think and I feel it myself, the teachers I remember, and I've had this discussion so many times that the inspiring teachers you remember or mentors or whoever they are from your life are generally the ones who you connected with, but also who just modeled some deep passion and fascination for the world or for a particular subject.

Yeah.

There's something really important about being around people who are extremely kind of in awe of the world and passionate about a particular path of learning. And I think that, yeah, you can't replace that. And that the online environment is, you know, is possible, but I think you can't be actually being in a room, in a space with somebody, in dialogue with somebody who is modeling a lot of those traits.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Interesting.

And so then extrapolating out of that in terms of what the implications are in your view, you know, from your extensive research about polymathy, but also your own experience of doing the homeschooling thing.

Yeah.

You know what? Yeah. And this is where can we find more of those opportunities in formal education?

So, okay, there are two things. First of all is variety. To suggest in my book a broader curriculum, but of course curriculum, I mean, there are lots of schools following wonderful curriculums. What is essential, like if we get back to history again, yeah, you know, I love history. So what was the ground of natural sciences and all thinking is philosophy. So one of the basics and absolutely crucial things is to philosophize. Always. So we had extra philosophy classes. I had some books. There is philosophy for children, like a subject. Some, some people do it. There is some literature. And so we had some books, but also we learned about philosophers, and we learned how to philosophize about stories, which is very easy in fact. And then what I did, and what I noticed, what made a huge difference, that we were all the time— I was I was asking them questions, they were asking me questions, and all the time getting around the essence of things. So this what they really got is thinking. And for instance, now when I see when my daughter attends some other classes, external classes, not in school, but like extracurricular classes in different things, also when she was doing philosophical classes or something else, all the teachers, they said, She knows how to think, you know. It's like, because she asks all the time and she asks very deep questions because we were doing that all the time.

Of course, for sure.

It's not that, of course, she's a wise child, it's true. But on the other hand, you have to train that. You have to see, because what happens in schools is just the opposite. The students are not allowed to ask because There is no time for that. If everyone will ask, what will happen to the program which teacher has to follow? So, so first, the essence of every polymath is philosophy because you have to think. Thinking is the main thing. Think, contemplate, philosophize. So that was also my learning from the whole polymathic approach in homeschooling that it was a a constant emergence into learning, into a great variety of learning, more subjects, everything, and constantly enveloped into reflecting on that.

Yeah.

So reflecting in a, of course, in a joyful, playful way. It's not that we would, you know, like really sitting like this famous Rodin's Thinker. No, not that, but just this asking. And for instance, like I love this this, this series. And on YouTube there is this, maybe you've seen it, it's called What If.

I haven't seen it.

And it's amazing, we love it so much. You know what we do? Of course now, because where they attend schools, they don't have time, but still I try at least once a week we meet and, and we watch this, the short films, like 5-minute films. What if something happens? Yeah, it's so fascinating because it blows your mind when you start like opening, opening. Okay, what if, what if? So, but, but you have to do it constantly. And this is what schools, where they press the poor teachers to because they're so pressed under their schedule, so they can't do much. I understand it completely. I don't criticize. I know that it's difficult. And also because they use the old classical means of teaching. And for instance, this is also one of my kind of messages, what I want always to bring, that formal schooling doesn't like or even hates actually alternative schooling. So they don't come together. They don't learn from each other. And for instance, people who are on the other side, yeah, on the, in the progressive education, they have such a huge, amazing learning tools which formal education knows nothing about, you know, because these people, they have freedom and time to experiment. Yeah. And in the experimenting, they develop new stuff, and school has no time to experiment, so they just have to apply the old stuff. And then what happens that they can't really actually connect because there is— they don't have tools for that. So they always say, you know, I have 25 children in a class, I can't do anything outside of this because I just can't. But you can. And I have such a— I mean, this is the second book which I hope now I will write soon, really have to finish it, about the history of education. There are absolutely mind-expanding examples of historical, retro innovation like what was possible, yeah, what people did, the stories of success, which are completely forgotten because they are not, yeah, not relevant today, but they are in fact. If you use that tool, very much so, you can achieve amazing heights. Okay, getting back to school, what can be done? So my main understanding of what's going on right now, especially after the 2nd December, when this is really like a milestone in, in the history of humanity, when, um, large linguistic model GPT became mainstream. You can say, okay, it's not mainstream right today. Many people still have no clue that it exists, but they will learn in the next couple of months. Yeah, they will discover that it's an existential threat to many professions. So, you know, I was thinking a lot about it. Believe me, last 2 weeks or 3 weeks, I'm absolutely all the time like very much under— I can't say stressed, but I was— lots of my visions were also questioned by that, especially also about polymathy in a way that I can see that in some things this machine can do really much better even than a polymath, or at least become such a great tool. I see amazing potential in that, and I also, I'm not on the negative side that it will ruin us all, but that before GPT, I was thinking that polymaths are kind of the avant-garde of the society and they will survive anyway because nobody can surpass their integration part.

Yeah.

Because the main advantage of a polymath was the ability to synthesize knowledge. Now, seeing what Midjourney does, seeing what ChatGPT does, we can see that they do synthesize knowledge. Absolutely.

Yeah.

So what is What is the evolutionary advantage of a polymath? Now, it's a good question.

It is.

It's a big question. Yeah. But, but, you know, I came to some conclusions, so I still have some good news.

Good, good. I'm glad.

So, and my, my idea goes anyway back to philosophy, back to fundamentals, which can be learned. But this means that we really have to disrupt our curriculum a lot. So we have to, in fact, get back to, or update kind of old learning technologies. We have to get back to the essential understanding how knowledge is created. And how new knowledge is created is through contemplating on it and through developing a solid conceptual understanding of every field. It means that if you look at schoolbooks, yeah, they're full of facts. Facts. They're full of little, little stuff. They're full of training for literacy, training for counting, training for stuff which you will never ever need, but they lack training of thinking, training of deep thinking, training of asking unpleasant questions.

Sure.

Questioning everything.

The only point I would disagree on is that, you know, there technical, you know, literacies that are absolutely essential to then be able to access some of that contemplative work that you're talking about, right?

Yeah, yeah, but I mean literacy in a way, like for instance in Austria, I don't know how you do it in UK now, but in, or in other Europeans, I know that for instance the Finnish education, they skipped writing for some, some years ago, they quit it from the curriculum, they don't have handwriting. They learn basic handwriting like months and then they don't do it anymore. They type everything on computer. So in Austria, children till the, I don't know, till 15 or even till the end of school time, I don't know, they always have to write everything with their hands and they handwrite. And it's like also a lot of, there is a lot of emphasis on spelling and correct writing. As writing, like your handwriting should be also readable and all that. It's clear, but the point is now it's not relevant anymore.

Not relevant, exactly.

You can't— you just can forget it, forget it. What now my understanding is that one, we really have to train thinking and to really drill how to ask right question, how to give right instructions to the robots. I mean, I'm sorry, this is what it is exactly how, how to instruct them the, the way they will not kill us, you know. Yeah. And for that you need such a huge overview. So my conclusion is, and why still polymers will have an advantage because they just have a greater breadth and depth, that I mean we have to be able to still understand a lot more than before. So we need really The good news for learners and the bad news for non-happy learners that in the future, and the future is today already, yeah, that we have to learn even more than ever before, but we have to change the learning mode. So we have to get back, let's put it like that, to Socrates and Aristotle, you know, to their mode of learning, how you grasp the breadth and depth in a shorter time. And this is what my main concern was. In fact, the last year I was really working hard on this concept, and I think now it's very timely that we can try to use it. The thing is that that's why everything needs to be redesigned, yeah, because of this new technology. And I can just give you one example. You've heard probably, you know, about Big Ideas, no?

Yeah.

So I was, um, The other day I gave this task to GPT to write how the theory and practice of dance can be viewed from the perspective of evolution.

Interesting.

Yeah, because I think, yeah, let's see if we can create new knowledge. And you know, it came up wonderfully because I am knowledgeable about dance and dancing and I'm a passionate dancer. So I was wondering how it will manage, but it did. He did, you know, it made a wonderful write-up on dancing through evolution. And so my vision is that we can learn with this. We have to learn more strategically, conceptually, more deeper and brighter in a way that in order to create the new stuff and in order to be able to compete somehow it should become deeper and more solid. But this solidness goes away because in the school children learn for testing. For instance, now, I mean, the question is about school marks. It's always the same. Why are you being judged by what you know by heart and not what you can actually practice? Yeah, fulfilling a task. So there are lots of questions about it. You know, by the way, I'm not somebody who says you don't have to learn by heart. Had just the opposite. I learned a lot by heart and I believe in learning by heart because this is what actually formed human thinking. Because if you have no information in your head, you can Google it or you can learn it from GPT, but you will not, I mean, you can't understand it. You can't understand what it's saying. Because of course, like we know there already now, because GPT is biased. Biased, as humans are biased, and it has wrong knowledge as well, because, yeah, lots of strange information is out there. So you have to have the knowledge. And so for having the knowledge, you have to learn by heart. And so, for instance, I am fascinated by the traditional Indian education. Of course, nobody will ever do it anymore, but still, if you think that, you know, that the Vedas were not written down, yeah, for a longer time. So at least one 1,000 years at least, or maybe 2, probably 2. They were not written down and they were transmitted orally. It means, and the Vedas is a huge, you know, it's a huge literary work. So people were learning for, to learn the whole cycle by heart, a person would need 24 years. But then the metaphor is like that, your brain is a computer. Yeah, for instance, it's a bad metaphor, but still. Deal. So you need the hardware to make software work. So if there's nothing in your brain, so imagine that time, what did they have? What kind of knowledge they had? They didn't have much like information as what we have now.

Sure.

So the whole Vedas was actually the main source of information for everything, for maths, for religious texts, for knowledge about creating everyday life, everything that was there. So you need this hardware. To create software, to create thinking based on what?

Yeah.

So that's why I am not against learning by heart. I'm not against learning in big quantities. Absolutely not. I'm absolutely for it, but it always should be, there should be depth. Yeah. So I'm a passionate follower of depth concept. Yeah.

But absolutely. I mean, one of the ways that we became connected was through the work of the London Interdisciplinary School and Carl Gombrich and Ed Fido. And I, one of the, my thinkings, and I haven't done deep research on it, but just to understand that there are potential catalysts for depth that come if you, you know, in, in terms of the way you structure a learning experience and yes, following curiosity and, and interest is of course important, but also So focusing on, as you, you, you said earlier, to kind of get to the essence of something, to get to the, the conceptual underpinnings of what's going on in this particular thing that you are learning about. Not just learning the superficial facts, although the facts are really vitally important to give color.

Yeah.

And it's, I spoke to Julie Stern on the podcast previously about conceptual understanding and how important that is. And I, it feels to me that, yeah, those super concepts and Big Ideas. I know they're different things, but just that different mechanisms and kind of structuring devices to help to get to the essence so that young people can connect more easily, synthesize more easily, go deeper more quickly. I think that whole area is a really important and, and, you know, interesting place to explore.

Yeah, and this is the future because I really don't see other, other ways. I, okay, I'm probably limited in my vision, but I tried hard to, to find what my, also one of my intentions, how to do it because I need a help of, of course, a team of people to do that, the team of specialists in their fields, of course, of course, like how to see the correlation of big ideas in all disciplines, how they are connected all together. So I, I have a rough understanding of that, but it's a future concept. I mean, there is a lot, a lot of potential in all that. And again, we're coming just back to where we started in the history because this is how our ancestors created all this stuff. You know, actually they kind of came to that knowledge, to this classification of knowledge, to all these things. And we're just probably the best innovation is the retro innovation, you know.

But also coming back to the, coming back in the sense that, you know, as you've just you said there, you needed specialists to understand the big ideas from multiple perspectives. And I think that multiple perspectives is the key. That's, that's also an area that I'm exploring, is that idea of distributed cognition and the fact that actually the thing that, that makes us so different as a species, you know, obviously, you know, the, the rate at which the AI is developing, this will be a different conversation in 5 years or even 2 years. But the thing that gives us that unique advantage is our ability to we kind of wire our minds together through collaboration and distributed cognitions where we're allowing multiple perspectives on the same concept or the same issue that we're facing to come together and help. And I think, you know, the idea that this problem can be solved by one mind just thinking really hard is absolutely fundamentally false. And how do we therefore also create educational environments where, you know, young people get that sense of using big ideas and super concepts and all these different things to kind of wire their minds together in a way that allows them to, in a very social and interpersonal experience, understand how learning progresses, how knowledge is developed, and, you know, ultimately how, how kind of history and individuals unfold within that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now collective learning is one of the the most, because, you know, by the way, this is related to polymathy, because there is this mythos of single genius, which is of course a mythos, because all these polymaths, if you go through the history also, all these what are called polymathic hotbeds, they existed. The blossom of polymathy happened only where it was supported money-wise, of course, or politically, So it means that, and also all these so-called single geniuses, even like Leonardo, he was very much, you know, supported by his, okay, not team, it's not the team, but his friends and colleagues, because he lacked lots of knowledge, you know, he was not knowledgeable in math and all that. So he always would, would go to, to check information with some friends. Same also for, I, I I was fascinated by the story of Einstein when he was in Bern. He was actually, that was the most productive time of his life where he actually came to all his major discoveries. It was in Bern in Switzerland. And he was there with Niels Bohr and other guys who were, they were meeting, you know, for what? They were meeting for discussions, of course, on physics and philosophy, but before they started discussing, they would do what? They would play music because all of them were wonderful musicians. All of them. Niels Bohr played piano, you know, Einstein violin. So they may actually, uh, like either improvisations or just kind of house concerts, you know, and within this time they also discuss stuff. So basically he had this absolutely enriching creative environment of like-minded people who were at the same time very like artistically particularly gifted people. And this was the boost of his own creativity and his own discovery. And after that, never ever was he that much brilliant, only in this period. And lots of, lots of people who we called single-handed geniuses, they are not. They're only supported by the very nourishing creative atmosphere.

And just, but just I wanted to say, I, that idea of kind of hot beds of polymaths throughout history, I think is really interesting. And I've also heard somebody else talking about a theory of that, that is correlated with economic flourishing. So that, of course, because there was material needs were taken care of, et cetera, there was a time of plenty, if you like.

Yeah.

People together were able to then focus on the development of knowledge and which kind of intuitively makes sense.

Right.

But also, so we kind of come back to that point of privilege and that idea that actually there's privilege associated with the ability to do this work. And therefore also, and I can't finish without asking you the question, so many of the polymaths throughout your book and throughout other people's books and throughout history that we know about are men. And so I'm just interested to ask you, what's your take on that? Is it purely a function of the fact that the men had the privilege the dominant kind of positions in society and therefore the space to be able to do that work because largely the women were busy doing other kind of sustaining work for the society.

Yeah, no, not even because they were doing other work, but because that's what we know from many examples, really the facts that they were just not allowed to study, you know. So what to do even if you're just It's not, you know, like Humboldt, for instance, he was also already, yeah, a great polymath. He was concerned with that, and he was in fact paying a kind of stipendium for ladies who would like to come to his lectures. He was actually paying them to come from different parts of Germany or even France or whatever, so that because he, he thought that it's needed that the women get educated. That was the middle of 19th century, of course no ladies were allowed to universities at all, so he was was funding ladies to attend his lectures.

Wow, that's very, yeah, very progressive.

Interesting. Yeah, very— now polymaths were very progressive always because they are at the avant-garde of the society.

Yeah, sure. But, but, oh, you know, this again, this is not something I've researched deeply, but it's just an intuition that I have, is that if the polymaths were so significant in terms of the shaping of history, and yes, they were at the avant-garde, but they were also in a dominant patriarchal mode, so the male dominant societies and the knowledge production was being done largely by those groups who were 90%, let's say for sake of argument, were 90% men. There is a skew and a bias that we've developed as a human race in terms of the way that we've developed. And obviously this is culturally specific and there's different, you know, different modes in different geographical regions. But there seems to me to be intuitively that that would create a bias in the particular ways that we attend to particular aspects of the world as we classify and as we generate knowledge and as we, you know, do all of that work. I don't know, would you agree with that?

Yeah, definitely. That's definitely so. But putting you on But we will see. Yeah, yeah, of course you will see that I have tried really, really hard to get some females in and found some really precious examples that despite circumstances they managed.

Yeah, but it was despite— it was despite the circumstances, right?

Yes, that definitely had an impact, but the times are changing, you know. Now we live in this century of female and it will only continue.

So let's hope, let's hope. I don't think we're quite there yet. Patriarchy doesn't quite want to die, but I, I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying.

Yes, but you know, even today, like, the number of— do you know, I don't know which country is it, or is it international, but I've read several statistics that female students outnumber male students in universities. Do you know that?

That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard statistics around Yeah, and the academic success as well of girls versus boys.

There is a just, just, yeah, a number, like number of female head of states now in the recent 20 years increased enormously. So basically in the next 20 years we'll experience, 20, 50 years we'll experience an absolute outstanding situation regarding gender. And actually, yeah, it will be just the opposite to what we have now.

Yeah. Well, I mean, thank you. I'm, this has been so interesting. I think I think there's so much richness in this, and I would absolutely recommend that people read the book. There's so much there and so many implications for the way that we think about education now. I'd love to continue the conversation with you and, you know, dig more into that as you build out your next book and your next concepts around that. But I think it's, yeah, there's a lot we can learn from it. And then just thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

Thank you, Tim Logan. That was a great pleasure and really great honor. And yeah, especially from such a person as you. So open-minded, so curious as you are. That's really a great asset, you know, today.

Thank you, I really appreciate that. Thanks, Asena.

All right.

Okay, great, Tim. All the best. Thank you.

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