The Last Man Who Knew Everything

There is a certain nostalgia for the age before knowledge was fragmented, divided into departments and parcelled out among an increasing variety of experts or specialists. This nostalgia has expressed itself in various ways, including the recent publication of four books about polymaths all of which happened to bear the same title The Last Man Who Knew Everything. Curiously enough they concerned four different individuals living in four different periods. A general study of polymaths over the long term might be illuminating. I don't want the book I am writing to turn into nothing but a gallery of intellectual portraits.