| Title: | Polymathy |
| Original Title: | Polymathie |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 12 (1765), p. 944 |
| Author: | Unknown |
| Translator: | Tyler Griffith [University of Edinburgh] |
| Subject terms: |
Literature
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.929 |
| Citation (MLA): | "Polymathy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Tyler Griffith. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2008. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.929>. Trans. of "Polymathie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 12. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | "Polymathy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Tyler Griffith. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.929 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Polymathie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 12:944 (Paris, 1765). |
Polymathy, knowledge of many arts and sciences; great and vast understanding of different fields of knowledge. See Encyclopedia. I gather this word comes from the Greek πολυ, multum , and μανθανω, disco .
Justus Lipsius, Scaliger, Saumaise, Pétau, Kircker, Vossius and Leibniz were great polymaths. The ancients called these types of people “polyhistors.”
Polymathy is often nothing more than a confused mass of useless facts that one reels out regardless of relevancy, just to make a spectacle of it. True polymathy is a vast erudition, a knowledge of a great number of things, well absorbed, well digested, that one applies to the subject one is discussing relevantly and only by necessity.