The following article by Howard Gardner was recently published in the Roeper Review (link here).
A “Smart” Lexicon
“John is so smart.”—“John’s a real dummy.”
In English, and no doubt in other languages as well, individuals have been so characterized for many centuries. Indeed, for at least a century, psychology has provided a way to measure “smartness” or “dumbness.” The IQ test provides a reasonable measure of how an individual is likely to do in school—particularly in a modern Western secular school. Of course, last year’s grades or class standing provide equally helpful (or damaging) predictions.
Shortly after the use of IQ tests became widespread, critiques of that form of instrumentation appeared. Sometimes, as in the case of psychologist David Wechsler (1944), the critiques came from within the psychometric community. At other times, as in the case of political commentator Walter Lippmann (1922), the critiques came from experts outside the profession.
A complementary language also emerged. In addition to being smart or intelligent or quick-witted, individuals could be characterized as talented. Perhaps John did not do well on an IQ test; but he may have been a talented artist, or humorist, or dancer, or mechanic, or salesperson.
Critiques moved into second gear when psychologists—including me—proposed alternative ways of thinking about intellect (Gardner, 1983/2011). As examples, Robert Sternberg (1985) proposed a triarchic theory of intellect, while David Olson (1996) spoke of skill with a medium. And most famously, building on the concepts and studies of Mayer et al. (2004), psychologist-journalist Daniel Goleman (1995) wrote about emotional intelligence and social intelligence.
Except perhaps in the vernacular (see the above characterizations of John) and within the psychometric community, the plurality of intelligence(s) is now widely acknowledged. We should say that “John is talented at school” or “John is not talented at this kind of school at this time.” And within school, we should say that “Jane is good at math but not at language,” or “Jane is good in history but not in physics” … or vice versa. I would go further—the distinction between “intelligence” and “talent” does not stand up to scrutiny. Either we should call all kinds of high abilities “talents” (including verbal and mathematical abilities) or we should call them all “intelligences.” There is no principled distinction between a talent and an intelligence.
In what follows, with the hope that they will be useful, I introduce further distinctions in the lexicon of unusual human performance(s):
Gifted/prodigious/talented: In every form of intellect, some individuals will stand out from an early age. Some might be gifted in a particular area; others are so gifted in one or more areas—“off the charts”—that we call them prodigies (Feldman, 1986).
Expert: In every known area of performance, there are adult standards for excellence. We call individuals who achieve those standards experts (Ericsson, 1986). One characteristic of individuals who are described as gifted is that they likely will reach a level of expertise or mastery at an early age.
Full stop: Giftedness and expertise pertain to spheres of knowledge and performances that are widely recognized within a society. The following pertains to performances that fall outside that categorization:
Creative/Creativity: Some individuals and some performances move or even “hijack” domains of knowledge and practice in new directions. Such innovation can occur planfully or by accident. One can strive to be creative, and fail; one can engage in ordinary practice and find that one has in fact been creative.
In any event, as formulated persuasively by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (1988), creativity does not primarily reflect intent; it reflects achievement. Only if a performance is deemed notable by the relevant communities, and only if the performance actually affects the subsequent standards of that community, does it merit the descriptor “creative.”
Importantly, intelligence(s) and creativity(ies) are not the same. One can be highly intelligent in a domain but not creative; or one can be creative without being especially intelligent (Guilford, 1967: Kaufman & Plucker, 2011).
So far, what I’ve written draws on earlier work by conceptualizers of unusual performance. Recently I have become interested in a human capacity in which I personally seem to have expertise—the capacity to synthesize (Gardner, 2020). My reflections have in turn suggested additions to the lexicon of extraordinary performances.
Synthesis: The defining characteristic of synthesis is the capacity to draw on and put together various areas of knowledge in ways that are useful to oneself and to others. A classic example of a synthesis is a textbook in a particular subject matter or discipline.
Syntheses differ in two ways: They can pull together strands within a specific area, say microeconomics, or cognitive psychology, or molecular biology; or they may seek to transcend such boundaries, synthesizing information from disparate fields such as syntheses of science and history, or literature and psychology.
Degree of creativity: Most syntheses have modest goals. They attempt to put together existing materials in a useful way. But some syntheses go well beyond that goal and a few are highly creative. Darwin’s work on “the origin of species” is the gold standard. But more modest syntheses can also affect domains. Economics textbooks changed after the publication of Paul Samuelson’s textbook. Howard Zinn’s history of the United States has had analogous ramifications over the succeeding decades. And many of us are drawn to works of unusual synthesis—Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) or, more recently, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens (2015).
Here is a final entry in this lexicon.
Polymath: We use this term to describe someone who is knowledgeable in two or more areas: for example, a student who scores high in all academic areas, a scientist who is an expert in biology, mathematics, and music, or a painter who is also a composer and a poet (Ahmed, 2019). Polymaths impress us, but they are not the same as synthesizers. The polymath knows many things, but may show neither inclination to draw them together, or no aptitude to do so. The synthesizer surveys or investigates many areas including ones in which (s)he has little training with the motivation to tie the strands together in an illuminating way.
We might say that the synthesizer has a purpose in mind and needs a method to tie together lines of expertise. The polymath picks up knowledge easily and can display it readily but need not have either a purpose or method.
Of course, polymaths who are also synthesizers are a valuable resource. Whether they can be detected at an early age, and whether those two forms of competence can be inculcated and intertwined over the course of development, is an important question, both for educators and for those concerned about the future of our planet. In both cases, of course, these talents need to be yoked to positive ends—in my terms, to the pursuit of good work and good citizenship.
Development in any area involves both differentiation and integration (Werner, 1957). Starting with the single construct of intelligence, psychologists and educators have proposed and provided evidence for various forms of cognition. In this analysis, I have proposed an additional form—synthesizing ability—and sought to begin the process of integration among the various forms of intellect.
References
Ahmed, W. (2019). The polymath. Wiley.
Csikszentmihaly, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 325–339). Cambridge University Press.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel. Norton.
Ericsson, K. A. (1986). Expertise: The road to excellence. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Feldman, D. (1986). Nature’s gambit. Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1983/2011). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (2020). A synthesizing mind. MIT Press.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam.
Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. McGraw Hill.
Harari, Y. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Harper.
Kaufman, J. C., & Plucker, J. (2011). Intelligence and creativity. In R. J. Sternberg & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of intelligence (pp. 771–783). Cambridge University Press.
Lippmann, W. (1922, November 8). The reliability of intelligence tests. New Republic, 32(414), 275–277.
Mayer, J., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. (2004). Emotional intelligence: Theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry, 15(3), 197–215.
Olson, D. (1996). Cognitive development: The child’s acquisition of diagonality. Taylor & Francis.
Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ. Cambridge University Press.
Wechsler, D. (1944). The measurement of adult intelligence. Williams & Wilkins.
Werner, H. (1957). Comparative psychology of mental development. International Universities Press.
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