Have Money, Won’t Travel

The category of “specialist” seems to be ingrained deeply both in the history of evolution, and the development of modern society. Homo sapiens is, in its own ways, a specialist: We are most remarkable for our large brains and the application of our intelligence to achieve a remarkable adaptability. And the modern economy is unimaginable without the participation of a dizzyingly long list of experts, each managing a small but essential part of the complex machine that is the modern global economy.

But is specialization an innate behavior, or learned? Don’t we describe specialization negatively, with terms like “pigeon-holing?” Aren’t we in awe of the true jack-of-all-trades? To answer this question, there is perhaps no tool quite