The tension between generalism and specialization is not a binary choice but a question of what the intellectual situation demands: depth without breadth loses context; breadth without depth lacks leverage. The polymath tradition — embodied in figures like Ibn Rushd, Leonardo da Vinci, and Leibniz — is not an anachronism but a response to the recognition that the most important problems cross disciplinary boundaries. What is called generalism at its best is not shallowness but the cultivation of the connective intelligence that can identify structural similarities across domains.
Each step builds on the last.