How to Master the Multidisciplinary Approach?

If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back. It would be like cutting off your hands. - CHARLIE MUNGER

When Alexander von Humboldt was born in 1769 to a family of wealthy Prussian aristocrats, by all standards of the day, he had it made. His father was an army officer and advisor to King Friedrich Wilhelm II, and his mother was the daughter of a rich manufacturer. If he wanted a comfortable existence, all he had to do was sit back and stay the course.

But despite these advantages, he was anxious and unhappy for most of his early years. His adventurous spirit was never satisfied by the confines of a classroom or the promise of a one-track career as a civil servant, however lucrative it may be. His dream was to explore the natural world.

As a child, Humboldt was fascinated by the journals of Captain James Cook and his accounts of distant lands and cultures. Humboldt recreated adventures of his own in the Berlin countryside, stuffing his pockets full of plants, rocks, and insects, earning the nickname ‘the little apothecary.’

But after his father died at the age of nine, his financial dependence on his strong-willed mother allowed her to dictate much of the early, unfulfilling course of his life. Despite his objections, she demanded that he work his way up the ranks of the Prussian administration.

Humboldt found creative ways to channel his deep interest in arts and sciences at different universities and academies along the way. He poured over the work of various artists, botanists, explorers, and thinkers. While each provided inspiration, Humboldt remained torn between the expectations of his family and his insatiable desire to set sail, experience the world firsthand, and contribute something of his own to the scientific community.

At the age of twenty-seven, longing to escape his tiny corner of the world, Humboldt started planning a voyage to South America. He set off three years later on an expedition which altered the course of his life. The driving force was his desire to piece together a more cohesive understanding of the natural world. While most scientists of his day were focused on isolated disciplines, Humboldt was interested in bridging the divide and the interconnected whole.

After arriving in Venezuela, Humboldt trekked for two months across the tropical grasslands of Los Llanos, facing temperatures near 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He followed this with seventy-five days of gruelling river travel down the Orinoco, covering 1400 miles to reach the Casiquiare canal – a natural tributary between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. Along the way, he faced torrential rains, incessant mosquitos, the occasional jaguar, and bouts with fevers and dysentery.

But no matter the conditions, Humboldt insisted on measuring the height of mountains, determining longitude and latitude, taking temperatures of the air and water, making astronomical observations, collecting new species of plants, and documenting it all with detailed notes. Each new environment brought him closer to understanding how the natural world fit together.

The pinnacle of his experience in South America came during a 2,500-mile journey from Cartagena to Lima to explore the Andean Mountains. During this trip, he attempted to summit Chimborazo, an inactive volcano standing at 21,000 feet.

At 15,600 feet, the porters refused to go on. But Humboldt continued his ascent, fighting through freezing conditions, deep fields of snow, and altitude sickness. Without fail, every few hundred feet he stopped and fumbled with freezing hands to set up his instruments to measure temperature, humidity, altitude, and boiling points. He reached 19,286 feet – a world record at the time – before he was forced to turn around due to impassable conditions.

This experience inspired Humboldt to sketch ‘Naturgemälde,’ a depiction of Chimborazo’s cross-sections with the distribution of vegetation, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure according to altitude. Humboldt showed, for the first time, that nature was a global force with corresponding climate zones across continents. And he did so in an infographic style, making it accessible to those without a scientific background.

Upon his return to Europe, Humboldt’s exploration of South America led him to write thousands of letters, essays, publications, and lectures. By making connections and framing nature as a unified whole, his work revolutionized the way we view the natural world. He was also the first to observe and describe human-induced climate change.

Humboldt inspired generations of scientists and writers including Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir. But his greatest contribution was making science more accessible and exciting to a broader audience.

In Berlin, his series of free lectures packed music and university halls with royal family, students, servants, women, and children. He took audiences on a journey that ignited their imaginations – combining scientific observation with vivid description. His work brought distant landscapes to life through poetry, geology, and astronomy, bridging the divide between art and science.

What does this teach us?

Humboldt could have settled into his early existence, lived a comfortable life and allowed others to assume the risk in their own research and exploration. But instead, he armed himself with a multidisciplinary approach to better understand the natural world and contribute what he learned along the way.

With broad exposure to a range of subjects, Humboldt leveraged the most useful knowledge from each. This allowed him to assess things from new angles, identify his gaps, and survey the range of available options. It also guarded him from false patterns and foolish attempts to apply a single model to every question he faced.

By operating across art, science, and exploration, Humboldt created a rich mental landscape and a more comprehensive understanding of nature. And the world was better for it.

Without this strategy, he wouldn’t have been able to lay the groundwork for the field of biogeography, breathe new life into the scientific community, or create his life’s work, Cosmos, a five-volume series on nature and science.

Today, as in Humboldt’s era, standard advice will lead you to specialize in a single discipline. But Humboldt was a champion of wandering early in life. Through a multidisciplinary approach, he learned to connect those pieces of his life in a way that brought him fulfilment and allowed him to live on his own terms. As a result, his essays and lectures teemed with authenticity, offering something new and striking a deeper chord with audiences.

When you position yourself at the intersection of multiple disciplines, you develop the ability to connect seemingly distant ideas in a way that others struggle to uncover. It’s here where true creativity and the most innovative solutions are found.

Honing a multidisciplinary strategy is about pursuing a wealth of personal and vicarious experience across disciplines. This begins with fueling your natural curiosity, drawing connections between your wide-ranging interests, and exploring new ways to stack the skills that set you apart.

By mastering a multidisciplinary approach, just as Humboldt demonstrated, you position yourself to offer your unique perspective and compete on your own playing field.