Millenium Men?

I know it sounds like some bad, hackneyed, trite superhero, reminiscent of a slew of early 90s superhero movies starring people like various Wayans' and other insignificants, but it is anything but. As I'm sure many of you are decently educated, as I have alluded to in previous posts, you are, no doubt, familiar with the term "Renaissance Man." While also the title of a movie starring Danny DeVito and Gregory Hines, I refer instead to the usage describing men of history who were quite diversified in their talents. Great men, most famous amongst them Leonardo DaVinci.

To run off on a little tangent here, I wonder how easy it actually was to acheive this status. It was expected of nobles and courtiers in those days to have a breadth of knowledge. But I wonder, especially coming out of a period in history called the Dark Ages, how easy discovering some of these things might have been. Not to take anything away from these men, but it seems to be analagous to fishing with dynamite. Perhaps the passage of time overshadows their accomplishments.

Back to our regularly scheduled program. The term Renaissance Man seems bandied about too easily these days. My mother described a professor of hers at the University of Minnesota as such, in as much as he was a professor of chemistry and also wrote skits for department dinners. I suppose what I am getting at here is introducing a new term into colloquiality. It's harder now to contribute the same depth of knowledge as a polymath of days of yore might. If you tried, more likely you would end as "jack of all trades, master of none." I think these days, diversity is everything. Unfortunately, the majority of fields have become so diluted that there is hardly any name recognition anymore, save with a select group of individuals. However, that group hardly qualifies as renaissance men as they devote the largess of their time to their work. But a man or woman who could contribute, perhaps defined by publications or something similar, who also shows proficiency in areas of the opposite spectrum could be considered for candidacy.

It almost seems like it would require an application. Something like the International Polymath Society. It would require a significant contribution to your main area of interest but still show ability outside of that in the arts. I'm not really sure where this is going anymore.

Here. List of Polymaths.