SPECIALISTS versus GENERALISTS.........It's Chicken and Egg..!!???

Specialization is for insects

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a cow, conk a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

As I understand bees, worker bees are selected, at birth to become a queen bee. Several worker bees are fed extra honey, and several queens are produced. Once emerged the first queen goes and kills all the un-emerged queens. If another queen has emerged, they fight to the death to determine a queen.

You said a worker bee will never be more than a worker bee. I merely pointed out queens begin as worker bees. Worker bees can become more than worker bees, if selected, to be specialized. A queen bee won’t lose her stinger, and can give birth.

Any analogy/metaphor/comparison can be picked apart if you really want to. I think you’re missing the forest for the trees though since I keep stressing that the quote/interpretation is about being a human being NOT being your job/career/vocation…

If we were to take the ‘insect hierarchy’ approach to social order/construction we’d have the cast system/feudal system and/or the form of communism that where you are stuck in a cast/class of people. Peasants are peasants and die peasants, nobles are nobles and die nobles (poor, rich, corrupt or otherwise isn’t the point – they are set in their social cast/class). Imperfect as it is, the democratic/capitalist form of social order/structure we have in the U.S. is about the ‘Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness’ and all that jazz. In American the idea is that you can and should be more than your job/career/vocation.

I don’t think your ‘worker bees can become queens’ point really helps the argument for ‘specialization’ personally.

First, the prospective queens are chosen, not voluntary.
Second, the queens are trained to be queen specialists, they’re just fed better than other bees.
Third, the ‘winner’ is the one who hatches first and then kills the rest…
Fourth, it’s not a universal opportunity for any/all worker bees. It’s not like a worker be at any point in her life can say ‘hey I wanna be the queen!’ and run for election.

No, the idea is rather simple. It simply depends on how varied, or how specialized a person wants to be.

It seems Einstein was so focused on physics, he couldn’t be bothered with the trivial. I believe he wore socks that didn’t match and couldn’t tie his own shoes.

Allegedly, Einstein wouldn’t have functioned well alone, in society, or at home. Sad in one way, but amazing in another. The man was a specialized genius.

 Einstein may have “specialized” in Physics in his adult life, but he was educated in Catholic Primary schools as a child (even though his family was Jewish by heritage), he went through his secondary education at a standard European “Gymnasium”, is suspected to have had a speech impediment in his younger days (that he must have overcome – as well as learning German, Italian, French and English along the way), studied at the Polytechnic in Zurich, essentially was a draft dodger by renouncing his German citizenship, worked as a school teacher and later as a patent clerk…. many of his early papers were written and published during his breaks from formal education/study… he was not a specialist. He was guy how was brilliant at connecting the dots between many scientific disciplines in order to become the father of modern physics. That’s not ‘specialization’ by any stretch of the imagination as far as I’m concerned considering that he basically pursued his theories as ‘passion projects’ even when he wasn’t formally studying and/or getting paid to do so.

If it weren’t for his ‘Human being-ness’ as a travelled man, a liberally educated man, and a man who did more than just get a degree and settle into the ‘skill/specialization’ of teaching or being a professional patent clerk by pursuing his ‘hobby’ of science (as in he wasn’t working toward a degree/paycheck during some of his research/publishing periods) then I think what has become a ‘specialized’ field of study (aka Physics, Theoretical Physics, etc) would never exist…

I think for the purposes of this discussion, the ‘Humans are humans because of DNA’ line of discussion is rather moot and pedestrian to be honest. “Nature/Nurture” discussions about human development are going on all the time in the ‘specialist’ world of sciences and there is still no total agreement except for this – we are formed partly by both our DNA AND our experience/education. Personally, I choose to be identified as more than my job/career/vocation… don’t you?  It is entirely possible to be a jack of all trades, master of many. How? Specialists overestimate the time needed to “master” a skill and confuse “master” with “perfect”… Generalists recognize that the 80/20 principle applies to skills: 20% of a language’s vocabulary will enable you to communicate and understand at least 80%, 20% of a dance like tango (lead and footwork) separates the novice from the pro, 20% of the moves in a sport account for 80% of the scoring, etc. Is this settling for mediocre? Not at all. Generalists take the condensed study up to, but not beyond, the point of rapidly diminishing returns. There is perhaps a 5% comprehension difference between the focused generalist who studies Japanese systematically for 2 years vs. the specialist who studies Japanese for 10 with the lack of urgency typical of those who claim that something “takes a lifetime to learn.” Hogwash. Based on my experience and research, it is possible to become world-class in almost any skill within one year. Even the phrase “Jack of all Trades” was considered a good thing when the phrase is believed to have originated. Only later did the phrase “Jack of all trades” also get the tag “master of none” which flipped the meaning to something negative. A “Polymath” is a term for a ‘renaissance man’ (someone well skilled in many areas – e.g. Leonardo Da Vinci). There’s even an extended form of the phrase that pulls it back to positive. “Jack of all trades, master of none, Certainly better than a master of one.” I suspect, personally, that the negative connotation started to g with the rise of power of the middle class as a trade/skilled labor strata of society gained power and influence through successful political and financial control. Like today, people didn’t see the immediate value of a ‘liberal’ or ‘renaissance’ education model because it was VERY expensive (and still is) when a a ‘practically minded’ skill tradesman’s son could be apprenticed off to a ‘specialist’ in a guild-house to learn a specific craft like barrel making/wheelwright, blacksmith, glass blowing, and so on… same was true for more academic fields too. Go to seminary/college to punch your ticket but you better pick a field of study after that OR be willing to go into politics/military service. There is a severe disconnect when the current model for education supports a ‘liberal’ foundation/education (including a level if indoctrination for citizenship as a standard goal of public school education), and there are so many ‘liberal arts’ requirements when pursuing a B.S. or B.A. and yet, the idea that Heinlein’s quote is essentially an encapsulated version of this very model that we all grew up with. .even in my ‘specialized’ training of Ed Media and Design the motto was to educate the ‘whole person’ and not just ‘specialize’ in teaching ‘the brain.’

The fool generalises the particular; the nerd particularises the general; some do both; and the wise does neither..........