Jack of All Trades, Or A Master of One
➙ Tell me dear friend, what should a person strive to become: the jack of all trades or a master of one?
➙ Well, we now have several disciplines that it is literally impossible to become the jack of all trades. I think what you meant is jack of many trades.
➙ Oh yes, jack of many trades.
➙ Then, here is my opinion. To be a master of a trade, you first ought to be a jack of many trades. The epitome of a particular field is no more constrained to that field, but have evolved to be an inter-disciplinary domain. I reckon that the idea of jack of all trades or many trades originated at a time when the size of each field was small. As the field was researched and studied, its size expanded to be many times larger than what it was some 200 years back.
➙ And now, the advanced stages are inter-disciplinary?
➙ Correct. The more advanced a field became, the more it became inter-disciplinary. You cannot delve much into biology without knowing chemistry. You cannot delve much into chemistry without knowing physics, and not much into physics without knowing Mathematics, and not much into Mathematics without basic logic. This inter-disciplinary relationship between fields is evidently in all domains.
➙ So my question was sort of insignificant.
➙ Oh no, it is very relevant when you look at it from the perspective of what your goals of learning the trades are?
➙ To acquire knowledge, get a job, start a venture, etc.
➙ If your goal is to acquire knowledge of a particular field, then you must open yourself to related disciplines too. If, on the other hand, you need a job that only requires you to have so much knowledge about the subject, such as teaching a particular age group, you don't have to be a master of that subject. You can, in this context, restrict yourself only to the field. If you want to start a venture, an inter-disciplinary knowledge, at least at the basic level, will do you wonders.