It’s worth remembering that what we’re looking for is not just people who contributed to multiple fields but generalists/rationalists: people who took a “big picture” view. (I’m willing to set aside the matter of whether their specific achievements were related to their “big picture” view of things since it will probably just lead to argument without resolution.) Leibniz would definitely fall into that category, for example, but I’m not sure Newton would. He had interests outside of physics (religion/mysticism) but they weren’t really related to one another.
not just people who contributed to multiple fields but generalists/rationalists
what’s the difference between being a generalist and contributing to multiple fields?
I’m willing to set aside the matter of whether their specific achievements were related to their “big picture” view of things since it will probably just lead to argument without resolution.
No, no! This is the meat of the question. If it were the case that generalism correlated with but did not cause great insights (for example, in a world that forced all really clever people to study at least 3 subjects for their whole academic lives this would be the case), then my original argument would fail.
It’s worth remembering that what we’re looking for is not just people who contributed to multiple fields but generalists/rationalists: people who took a “big picture” view. (I’m willing to set aside the matter of whether their specific achievements were related to their “big picture” view of things since it will probably just lead to argument without resolution.) Leibniz would definitely fall into that category, for example, but I’m not sure Newton would. He had interests outside of physics (religion/mysticism) but they weren’t really related to one another.
what’s the difference between being a generalist and contributing to multiple fields?
No, no! This is the meat of the question. If it were the case that generalism correlated with but did not cause great insights (for example, in a world that forced all really clever people to study at least 3 subjects for their whole academic lives this would be the case), then my original argument would fail.