Last Days of the Polymath

From More Intelligent Life: Last Days of the Polymath.

The word “polymath” teeters somewhere between Leo¬≠nardo da Vinci and Stephen Fry. Embracing both one of history’s great intellects and a brainy actor, writer, director and TV personality, it is at once presumptuous and banal. Djerassi doesn’t want much to do with it. “Nowadays people that are called polymaths are dabblers-are dabblers in many different areas,” he says. “I aspire to be an intellectual polygamist. And I deliberately use that metaphor to provoke with its sexual allusion and to point out the real difference to me between polygamy and promiscuity.”
Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson

<a href="http://www.alissawilkinson.com">Alissa Wilkinson</a> founded The Curator in 2008 and was its editor for two years. She now teaches writing and humanities a <a href="http://www.tkc.edu">The Ki