Gardner's idea of multiple intelligence

Most of us think we are inadequate and incomplete learners, but Howard Gardner offers a more comprehensive look at learning in his review of this book on the origins of the mind as our brains evolved rapidly in the Pleistocene period.

Gardner believes we have multiple intelligences and not merely one means of expressing intelligent ideas!

Howard Gardner's categories are:

logical
grammatical
syntactical
symbolical
musical
numerical
personal -- emotional
naturalist -- natural historical

capacity | development in infancy | research data | prehistoric record | early human ability

A Book Review by Howard Gardner of

Steven Mithen's The Prehistory of the Mind

[ Howard Gardner "Thinking about Thinking," NYRB, Oct. 9, 1997, pages 23- 27.]

Mithen argues that all of these faculties of the mind: religion, art, and science arise in a prehistoric "mentality" of a tool maker culture. Tool acquisition and use require that devotion (religion), tactile expression (art), and knowledge (science) of the natural world be integrated in such a way as novel "mental capacities" or the seeds of our current multiple intelligence emerged.

Symbolic (representational) and mimetic (imitating) capacities inherent in language, speech & dexterity is traced to a two-million year long evolutionary trail, or a symphonic movement in three stages:

1. use of bodies to imitate older and more sophisticated members of the group.

2. spoken language to tell stories.

3. invention of symbolic and notational systems used eventually to preserve memories and transmit complex forms of culture such as religion, art, and knowledge. [23]

a. numerical symbols or notational indicators of a process (multiply, add, subtract, divide)

b. linguistic pictographs, notation of sounds, letters, or ideographs.

Gardner writes that "I find most convincing Mithen's claim that human intelligence lies in the capacity to make connections: through using metaphors..., or through the unexpected juxtaposition of images that make us laugh."

[ Gardner, page 25.]

"To make connections is to link the various quasi-independent intellectual modules." argues Gardner and that these connections among ritual devotion, creative expression and knowledge of nature gives rise to a diverse range of mental capabilities.

Gardner posits 8 intelligences { or intellectual modules, capacities, cognitive clusters and mental amalgams!}

Jerry Fodor's description of different "modules of the mind" (... based on Noam Chomsky's theory that the mind is hard wired for knowledge..) -- is that the mind is not one, but many separate 'thinking' devices, each with a separate purpose, capability and means of expression through talking, doing, or inventive display.

[24]

The ways we know the earth,

The mind, as parts of the brain working together.

Multiple intelligences

means that there is not only one type of intelligence or aptitude but several.

These are:

logical
grammatical
syntactical
symbolical
musical
numerical
personal -- emotive
naturalist -- natural historical

general intelligence is a vague and insubstantial term consisting of [25-26] specific:

sensory 6 senses [touching, smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing, immunity]

perceptual mental interpretation of what one "apprehends"

conceptual verbal, visual, or written expression of what one "comprehends"

Piaget

Karmiloff-Smith's research in support of Piaget's generalized developmental stages reveals that these stages develop incrementally as we mature from infancy through adolescence:

infancy (earliest months)

1. recognition of adult sounds,

2. musical tonality (differences in consonant and dissonant intervals),

3. recognition of facial patterns,

4. responsiveness to engage in highly specific communicative exchanges with loving caregivers,

5. appreciate simple numerical operations,

6. imitate actions of others,

7. awareness of their own bodies.

The empirical research, evidence shows that infants are aware of basic properties of objects a full year before Piaget thought they were.

[26]

Gardner concludes that "recent research on early infancy provides the strongest clues to the inherent modularity of human cognition." The mental capacities as reflected in multiple intelligences "are constructed so that they automatically become active under appropriate circumstances." [26] The mystery remains as to "How the various modules become able to work together?"

[26]

For example we harbor intellectual capacities to:

perceive or use sensory clues

compare or distinguish like from unlike things

associate or group similar things together

infer meaning and imply hidden messages

"Empirical evidence shows that the mind -- human or pre human -- is distinguished precisely by the fact that it does not treat all experiences or all problems as equal and does not harbor all purpose rules or operations." Each of the above four discretionary abilities of the mind suggest a "highly particular nature of these species of -- intelligence" that augments our survival in a changing world.

All creatures demonstrate varied capacities for neural sophistication such as a "sparrow's song, maze-running rodents, dance in bees, foraging by ants, or whale's songs." Humans have inherited this neural sophistication and share the dexterity of all animals in adapting our mental capabilities to a wide range of hazardous situations.

Gardner concludes that, the time is ripe to integrate findings from: evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, bran study, and cognitive archeology, to better understand and teach to these multiple intelligences.

Gardner believes that our multiple mental capacities for thinking visually, morally, imaginatively and quantitatively arose due to:

Two great prehistoric achievements,

1. numbers of specific unconnected "mental" capacities -- like chambers in a building,

2. enlarged frontal lobes with better interconnected capacities -- like big rooms & antechambers"new meta-chambers,

( for such 'modern' functions as consciousness )."

[27]

Gardner may be on to something in his hypothesis of multiple intelligences because of findings from the field by archaeologists. They have found just since 1996, that:

hominids with stone tools existed 400,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Homo erectus still lived as recently as 27,000 years ago!
finely crafted spears are 400,000 years old.
dogs may have been domesticated 135,000 years ago.
Neanderthals may have composed music for the flute and had vocal chords.
[25]

Humans are not a progressively perfect model of a successful mammal. That is because our descent implies inefficiency and mistakes as we inherit various genetic capacities and learned capabilities from our ancestors. But the evidence is mounting that human descent is augmented by a cultural ascent (Bronowski). As such an "Ascent of Man" is only possible with the simultaneous development of the brain, tool making, language and cognition.

How these facilities arose to imbue human cultures with rich associations remains unclear in the specific details. But the general pattern emerging today suggests that multiple means of knowing and expressing our intelligence are with us because of this long evolutionary past.

The effects of technology on intelligence

Metaphors are comparisons between two or among more things without using "like" or "as" to make the comparison.

For example:

"a wine dark sea," or "the rosy fingered dawn," or "virgin birth."

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