To be fair, back then they knew orders of magnitude less stuff. The span of their knowledge was comparable to, like, a modern middle schooler. Super impressive don’t get me wrong, but this was back when you could just learn basically everything humanity knew about a subject like “chemistry” if you had a reasonable amount of free time and gumption.
I could name every Pokemon back in 1998, I think a lot of people could, or at least get most of them. That’s a different feat today. Don’t compare yourself to past polymaths too much.
To be fair, back then they knew orders of magnitude less stuff. The span of their knowledge was comparable to, like, a modern middle schooler. Super impressive don’t get me wrong, but this was back when you could just learn basically everything humanity knew about a subject like “chemistry” if you had a reasonable amount of free time and gumption.
I could name every Pokemon back in 1998, I think a lot of people could, or at least get most of them. That’s a different feat today. Don’t compare yourself to past polymaths too much.
I mean, it’s more like comparing oneself to present polymaths, who are similarly impressive except for the “contributing new knowledge” thing.