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In 1979, a group of researchers affiliated with the Harvard Graduate School of Education received a sizeable grant from a Dutch foundation, the Bernard Van Leer Foundation. This grant was designed for a grandiose purpose, one proposed by the foundation. Members of the Project on Human Potential (as it came to be called) were expected to carry out scholarly work on the nature of human potential and how it could best be catalyzed. When we carved out our respective projects, I received an interesting assignment: to write a book about what had been established about human cognition through discoveries in the biological and behavioral sciences. Thus was born the research program that led to the theory of multiple intelligences. I saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collate and synthesize what I and others had learned about the development of cognitive capacities in normal and gifted children as well as the breakdown of such capacities in individuals who suffered some form of pathology.
All human beings possess not just a single intelligence. Rather, as a species, we human beings are better described as having a set of relatively autonomous intelligences. Most lay and scholarly writings about intelligence focus on a combination of linguistic and logical intelligences—the intellectual strengths, I often maintain, of a law professor. However, a fuller appreciation of human beings occurs if we take into account spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences. While we all have these intelligences, individuals differ for both genetic and experiential reasons in their respective profiles of intellectual strengths and weaknesses. No intelligence is in and of itself artistic or non-artistic; rather, several intelligences can be put to aesthetic ends if individuals so desire. No direct educational implications follow from this psychological theory; but if individuals differ in their intellectual profiles, it makes sense to take this fact into account in devising an educational system. The Work that Lies Ahead Much work needs to be done on the question of how the intelligences can best be mobilized to achieve specific pedagogical goals. I do not believe that educational programs created under the aegis of MI theory lend themselves to the kinds of randomized control studies that the federal government is now calling for in education. But I do believe that well-choreographed “design experiments” can reveal the kinds of educational endeavors where an MI perspective is appropriate and where it is not. Were I to be granted more time and energy to explore the ramifications of MI theory, I would devote those precious gifts to two endeavors. First of all, as indicated above, I have become increasingly fascinated by the ways in which societal activities and domains of knowledge emerge and become periodically reconfigured. Any complex society has 100-200 distinct occupations at the least; and any university of size offers at least 50 different areas of study. Surely these domains and disciplines are not accidents; nor are the ways that they evolve and combine random events. The culturally constructed spheres of knowledge must bear some kind of relation to the kinds of brains and minds that human beings have, and the ways that those brains and minds grow and develop in different cultural settings. How does the human mind deal with interdisciplinary studies—are they natural or unnatural cognitive activities?
Second, from the start, one of the appealing aspects of MI theory was its reliance on biological evidence. At the time, in the early 1980s, there was little relevant evidence from genetics or evolutionary psychology; such speculations were mere hand-waving. There was powerful evidence from the study of neuropsychology for the existence of different mental faculties, and that evidence constituted the strongest leg on which to justify MI theory. 20 years later, knowledge is accumulating at a phenomenal rate in both brain science and genetics. At the risk of seeming hyperbolic, I am prepared to defend the proposition that we have learned as much from 1983 to 2003 as we did in the previous 500 years. As an amateur geneticist and neuroscientist, I have tried as best I can to keep up with the cascade of new findings from these areas. I can say with some confidence that no findings have radically called into question the major lines of MI theory. But I can say with equal confidence that in light of the findings of the last two decades, the biological basis of MI theory needs urgently to be brought up to date. It is time to revisit the issue of the relationship between general and particular intelligences. This revisiting can and is being done in various intriguing ways. Psychologist Robbie Case proposed the notion of central conceptual structures—broader than specific intelligences but not as all-encompassing as Piagetian general intelligence. Philosopher Jerry Fodor contrasts impenetrable dedicated modules with a permeable central system. The team of Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and Tecumseh Fitch suggests that the unique quality of human cognition is its capacity for recursive thinking; perhaps it is recursion that characterizes advanced thinking in language, number, music, social relations, and other realms. Electrophysiological and radiological studies indicate that various brain modules may already be activated in newborns. Neural imaging studies of individuals solving IQ-style problems suggest that certain areas of the brain are most likely to be drawn on for these kinds of problems; and there may be evidence for genes that contribute to unusually high IQ, as there clearly are genes that cause retardation. And our own case studies of unusually high performances suggest a distinction between those who (like musicians or mathematicians) are outstanding in one area, as opposed to those generalists (politicians or business leaders) who display a relatively flat profile of cognitive strengths. Were I granted not simply more time and energy but an additional lifetime or two, I would like to rethink the nature of intelligence with respect to our new biological knowledge, and in relation to our more sophisticated understanding of the terrain of knowledge and societal practice. I am glad that I had the chance to make an opening move some 20 years ago, that I have been able to revisit the MI game board periodically, and that I have laid out my pieces problematically so that other interested players can have their chance to engage. For More Information
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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