The Renaissance ideal – that a single individual could be not only master but simultaneously excel in the arts, the humanities, and the sciences – is both mythic and alluring. Extraordinary genius, when genetics and circumstances vouchsafe such a gift, is a rare and precious thing, a blazing meteor that illuminates the darkness that is our collective ignorance, filling us with wonder.
Even Leonardo da Vinci, however, felt the need to plead for support. In a letter to Ludovico Sforza, the then ruler of Milan, da Vinci pleads his case based on an extensive list of military capabilities he can offer – bridges, sieges, bombardments, and cannons – and only at the end does he note, "Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze and clay. Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be." His method has stood the test of time; today, we still outline the economic and societal benefits of basic research and scholarship as justification for support.
The very phrase "Renaissance individual" continues to conjure images of Leonardo da Vinci painting masterpieces, exploring human anatomy, designing engines of war, and sketching flying machines. Over five centuries later, da Vinci's extraordinary talents continue to captivate, as Bill Gates' 1994 purchase of da Vinci's Codex Leicester for over $30M illustrates.
Nor are such homages limited to da Vinci. In every age, we admire extraordinary talents -- polymaths of all types – and their intellectual prestidigitations. In 1962, while hosting a group of Nobel Prize winners at the White House, President John F. Kennedy famously quipped, though I suspect the line may have been scripted by Ted Sorensen, that this was "… the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. "
However, as the volume and diversity of human knowledge continue to grow exponentially, the time when even a supremely gifted and highly trained individual might truly aspire to know "everything worth knowing" has long past. As the fractal shore of our collective knowledge grows, our individual gestalt fades, and universality sadly and inevitably gives way to mere specificity. This hyperspecialization of knowledge and the repeated speciation of disciplines have deprived us of a collective lingua franca, when scholars and artists could fluently share ideas, experiments, and insights across intellectual and artistic domains. For this, we are the less.
How then might we bridge this widening gulf of incomprehension when holistic understanding is beyond the reach of any one individual, no matter how talented or skilled? How might we increase the frequency of consilience, where seemingly unrelated knowledge and insights can illuminate a greater whole? Put another way, how might we create multiplicative, rather than merely additive creative capabilities? Can we reify the School at Athens?
Without doubt, the answer lies in collaborating, transdisciplinary teams. I thoughtfully and carefully emphasize transdisciplinary, rather than simply cross-disciplinary or interdisciplinary, for stepping out of an intellectually constraining Weltanschauung and linguistically restrictive nomenclature are crucial.
Though the need to build transdisciplinary collaborations has arguably never been greater, it remains extraordinarily challenging. In academia, many of our structures reward, as they should, disciplinary focus, individual achievement, and scholarly volume. All too often, though, we debate, seemingly endlessly, disciplinary bona fides and finely nuanced intellectual gradations, while the deep and holistic questions vex us – life, nature, and its processes; matter, energy, and the universe; and the human condition. Exploring these timeless questions requires both breadth and depth.
My gifted friend and former colleague at the University of Illinois, Professor Donna Cox, coined a phrase to capture the power and possibility of a collective artistic and intellectual endeavor. She called it a Renaissance team, a group of individuals with complementary skills and talents, capable of feats of academic legerdemain not possible by any one individual alone. It is an idea with great power.
When I moved to North Carolina in 2003, I created the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), based on Donna's ideas. Spanning the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and Duke University, RENCI was created to marshal talent and expertise from each university, leavened with advanced computing, to attack wicked problems.
Drawing on Donna's insights and based on my own humble experience, I believe there are four defining attributes of Renaissance teams. First, each team member must evince, in equal measure, an eager willingness to share expertise within their discipline and an equal humility and willingness to learn from their partners. What emerges from such collective cross-education is an energized team whose skills and capabilities exceed the initial sum of its parts. Like the clerk (clergyman) in the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, each team member embodies the aphorism, "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."
Second, the team must be committed to an aspirational objective whose achievement is worthy of unreserved commitment. At its best and most noble, it is a life-defining achievement. In business parlance, it is a BHAG – a big, hairy audacious goal. As Robert Browning put it more poetically in Andrea del Sarto, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a heaven for?"
Third, team members must unhesitatingly sacrifice personal fame and success for the greater good and in pursuit of the shared objective. This behavior is predicated on mutual commitment and trust that team members will subsume their own ego. As the plains writer, Willa Cather, put it, "… that happiness, to be dissolved into something truly great."
Fourth, the team leader must create and nurture an environment where disparate voices are heard and respected, regardless of social rank or intellectual reputation. By inculcating a culture of inclusion and opportunity, the team leader creates a sense of possibility, one that allows ideas to emerge organically and spontaneously.
This is the essence of a Renaissance team, built on trust and mutual commitment, combining disparate expertise, and united in pursuit of a worthy and audacious goal.
Building such a team is not easy, and the circumstances must be just right, but when it is successful, extraordinary things are possible. I do believe we can increase the odds, however. It's not complicated.
Listen to the dreamers; share their passion; imagine the future; and invest in their possibility. And remember, as da Vinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
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Posted by: David Schillo | August 29, 2018 at 11:18 PM