[sciboy]

1) I would disagree. The definition of polymath is someone who is an expert at orthogonal subjects. Your definition of expert seems to be slightly lower than mine. My definition would be someone who could give a lecture to other experts in the field with a days notice and be able to answer questions to the satisfaction of the audience.

2) If this were true it would be a short time until science itself crumbled. How then are people able to keep on top of their fields with finite time? The number of scientists isn't exponentially increasing, nor are the number of publications. It's growth, but it's not exponential as far as I can tell.

3) A polymath is someone who has knowledge in orthogonal knowledge spaces. If your field requires knowledge in other very related areas then I wouldn't consider that polymath-like activity.

[Rantenki]

1) That may be your definition, but it is not the dictionary one. Not that I don't wish that there were more people with leading edge expertise in independent fields, but the definition of polymath is merely great learning in diverse fields.

2) The population as a whole is increasing exponentially, as is the rate of discovery in a great many fields. While I doubt the situation is sustainable, the condition does exist at least in the short term. There is a degree of subjectivity here, but I stand by my statement.

3) Same as #1, worded differently a bit. I actually spent some time looking up different variations of the definition of polymath, and it turns out orthogonality (or independence, since orthogonality seems to be imply different things in compsci than for other disciplines) is not a requirement, just divergence seems sufficient.

As an aside, I am not trying to redefine polymath for my own benefit, being a broad generalist in a lot of fields, but still too focused on some compsci stuff to be a true expert in any of the other ones.