“In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings – initially a blank slate – could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early ‘naive’ theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains.” Howard Earl Gardner’s, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

The theory of Multiple Intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 to more accurately define the concept of intelligence and to address the question whether methods which claim to measure intelligence (or aspects thereof) are truly scientific. The theory of Multiple Intelligences maintains that there are many different types of “intelligences” ascribed to human beings. In response to the question of whether or not measures of intelligence are scientific, Gardner suggests that each individual manifests varying levels of different intelligences, and thus each person has refined in subsequent years. It suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

Linguistic intelligence (“word smart”);
Logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart”);
Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”);
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart”);
Musical intelligence (“music smart”);
Interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”);
Intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”); and
Naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”).

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