Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) / quote 26 of 91
Intelligence is a stew, not a number
Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, who published his latest theory of multiple intelligences in 1993, put it this way: Strong evidence exists “that the mind is a multifaceted, multicomponent instrument, which cannot in any legitimate way be captured in a single paper-and-pencil-style instrument.” Ready to cry uncle? Is intelligence going to be the province of comments like “I don’t know what it is, but I know when I see it”? No, but to see the issue more clearly, we are going to have to replace this one-number-fits-all notion. Human intelligence is more like ingredients in a stew than numbers in a spreadsheet.