Thoughtober... I am thinking about....
Specialist versus Generalist
spe·cial·ist
[ˈspɛʃ(ə)lɪst]
NOUN
a person who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity; a person highly skilled in a specific and restricted field:
gen·er·al·ist
[ˈdʒɛn(ə)rəlɪst]
NOUN
a person competent in several different fields or activities.
This thinking has been in my mind a lot in the past couple of months.
It came about from a whymsical pondering of how best to become a subsistence farmer.
In this pondering I started to have the discussion about how useful it is for both the individual and society to either be specialist or generalist.
My thinking is this -
As ever with these things, initially the premise of specialist is something that is pretty special.
In that to be able to focus on a passion, a single field, one area so that you become an ‘expert’ is an ideology that is supposedly beneficial to society.
I think this though has the ability to be highjacked by hubris.
That people become myopic in their approach, that we ‘defer’to the expert.
That there can be no debate or discussion as they are right and you are not the expert. This to me is increasingly becoming the case.
There is the danger of readers of google becoming keyboard experts, however they can soon be weedled out, although when you do they become quite aggressive in their response.
A generalist to me has the key word of competence in the definition. It is not enough to not be competent so there is a level of dedication and application in a number of areas that maybe not to the depth of specialist but needs to be enough to be competent.
A generalist has the advantage that they are not reliant on as many others to shore up the gaps in their knowledge
A specialist has the advantage (if they are niche enough) to be able to command the ownership of theory and application.
I think in my whymsy and aspiration to become a subsistence farmer that generalist is what is needed, however society as is is completely geared up to encourage people to specialise not generalise.
What do you think?
Why do you think that?
Which would you rather be?
“Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
Interesting topic. I have always struggled with the society concept of being a specialist on something: choosing one career and try to excel at it, choosing one hobby and trying to excel at it, studying one topic and trying to excel at it and the list goes on... In my life I feel I have evolved and changed during the years so many times, therefore having just one thing, one specialism in any field has been impossible for me and against my nature. I think in the world we need a bit of both.... there are some matters in which you would rely on someone that is a specialist about it and others where you need a generalist. If we talk about the way we think I believe humans should be able to realize when we need to be specialist in observing something or when we need to consider multiple aspects of that specific situation and have a 360 degree view. Does our brain have capacity for the that, can our brain be used in both ways? Mostly, do we have the courage to be generalist and accept that are different shades of something and not a unique answer but maybe many? There is definitely a bigger element of uncertainty in being a generalist so for some might be uncomfortable as you have different areas and different potential outcomes to consider. Being a generalist also means feeding our curiosity, exploring new things, seeing things from different point of views... does society really wants us to unleash that freedom? Or maybe it just wants us to focus on our specialism, getting busy with it while we try at all cost to excel at it... lots of thoughts and reflection there!