Welcome!

[Mike]

Welcome to our forums. My name is Michael Barnathan and I'm here to answer your questions about Project Polymath, an initiative that I and the other trustees founded in late 2007.

Project Polymath is an effort to create a university unlike any currently in existence, catered towards a segment of the population paradoxically among the greatest in potential yet among the least in recognition. Since the industrial revolution, university education has become increasingly vocational and specialist, with areas of study becoming increasingly narrow. Knowledge is quantized and compartmentalized into departments, often separated by quite arbitrary boundaries. And woe betide the student who thinks to study across those boundaries!

This does not accurately model how people learn, it does not accurately represent the skills required to achieve, and it does not account for many of the great innovations of human history.

But most importantly, it does not grant a satisfactory education or fulfill the potential of individuals with multiple talents or talents that lie across these arbitrarily drawn boundaries, and thus prevents these individuals from turning their talents into accomplishments.

Project Polymath is an effort to establish a university that is oriented around these students' unique goals, supporting their individual talents wherever they may lead, always encouraging them to stretch further towards Truth and Beauty as they envision them. And because each individual accomplishment carries with it the promise of social advancement, Project Polymath is also a push towards a new age of rapid innovation in art, science, technology, philosophy, and self-understanding.