“Who owns intelligence?”

Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, has grappled with this question of late. Who gets to be the arbiter of what intelligence is and who, or what, has it?

More than a century ago, psychometricians staked their claim by proposing the almighty g, or general intelligence. They measured it with IQ tests, which assess cognitive abilities such as verbal reasoning, working memory, and visual-spatial skills. Eventually, psychometricians convinced much of Western society that, through IQ, they were the arbiters of intelligence.

While the IQ test has been used nobly — to identify students in need of extra help with reading or writing, for example — it has also been used to deterministically sort people into groups and write off others entirely. Seeing injustice justified with IQ, educators grew increasingly fed up with the indicator in the second half of the 20th century. Such a narrow definition of intelligence simply didn’t comport with the range of cognitive abilities teachers observed in their students.

In this milieu, one buzzing with rebellious suspicion of the tyrannical IQ, Gardner wrote Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983). In the book, he proposed, based on evidence from many different disciplines and sources, that the human mind is best described in terms of faculties. He further argued that humans possess at least seven distinct computational capacities, or intelligences, activated by information from a variety of senses, operating separately or in concert. (He subsequently added an eighth.) 

These intelligences are:

• Linguistic-Verbal. Proficiency with words, languages, writing, and speaking.
• Logical-Mathematical. Skill in analyzing problems, detecting patterns, and reasoning.
• Spatial-Visual. Ability to manipulate and visualize images, shapes, and 3D space.
• Bodily-Kinesthetic. Expertise in using one’s body (think dancers or mimes).
• Musical. Ability to recognize and produce rhythm, pitch, and timbre.
• Interpersonal. Capacity to understand, detect, and respond appropriately to the moods and motivations of others. 
• Intrapersonal. Recognizing one’s own feelings and being introspective about them.
• Naturalistic. Skill in understanding the natural world and identifying its denizens.

When the book hit the shelves, Gardner figured Frames of Mind would be read by members of the general public interested in psychology. He didn’t think it would become a bestseller, nor did he set out to knock IQ off its lofty pedestal. He certainly had no idea it would alter the trajectory of his life. But it undeniably did.

Educators latched onto Gardner’s theory in what Boston College educational psychology professor Scott Seider described as a “grassroots uprising.” Gardner was invited to speak at educational conferences across the world. Curricula gradually shifted toward more varied, active, and creative instructional methods. Rote memorization was deprioritized, while engagement was encouraged.

The response from the scientific community was less effusive. Most psychologists simply ignored the book. A handful attacked it, labeling the theory pseudoscience or a “neuromyth.” Its harshest critics continue to insist that there’s no clear neural evidence for distinct, multiple intelligences (MI); the theory is not readily testable (in the way IQ is); and MI’s offshoot teaching strategies are inappropriately studied (even outright harmful). 

Gardner doesn’t mind responding “thoughtfully to thoughtful criticisms.” He has countered that there is evidence from neuroscience supporting MI theory; the critics misunderstand or straw-man the theory; and while he has never himself proposed educational paradigms based on MI theory, those that have cropped up seem to be well-liked and effective. He also admits that the MI theory does not lend itself easily to testing through “paper-and-pencil assessments or a one-shot experiment.” It is instead “repeatedly assessed and re-formulated as new empirical findings from a variety of disciplines are analyzed and integrated.” In other words, it is a living theory based on evolving evidence.

More than four decades and hundreds of thousands of copies later, Frames of Mind and its landmark theory remain the subject of sometimes heated debate, but Gardner is content with how his groundbreaking views of intelligence landed and who found it valuable. His theory might receive only begrudging mention in psychology textbooks, but it is used, directly and indirectly, in classrooms worldwide.

“I’ve lost the battle with psychometricians, but I’ve won the war with the rest of the world,” he told Big Think in an interview.

This month, Frames of Mind will be reissued for the fourth time. Its reappearance on the literary scene comes at a time when younger generations, who may be naive to MI theory, are searching for new ways to be defined. IQ’s claim over intelligence has decidedly waned, and novel intelligences are emerging.

“The discussion about intelligence is in a totally different place now,” Gardner said.

Now 82, Gardner reflected on how MI theory helped expand educators’ toolboxes, flourishing into a variety of fascinating forms. One he is particularly fond of was created by an educator in Manila. She gives prizes to students who are strong in certain intelligences, and even greater prizes to pupils who use their intelligences for good.

“The idea to combine intelligence with a positive use of it is a profound one,” Gardner said. 

He also contemplated lessons learned from writing his memoir, “tracing his evolution from bookish child to eager college student to disengaged graduate student to Harvard professor.”

“It was only in writing my memoir that I realized that my own mind is what I call a ‘synthesizing’ mind,” Gardner said. “That’s one who takes lots and lots of information and tries to organize it and reorganize it in ways that make sense to me and hopefully others as well.”

A synthesizing mind, he adds, differs from a purely analytical mind, which excels at delving deep into a select few topics, and from a creative mind, which seeks to chart new paths. As with intelligences, every mind has different strengths, but in the age of information overload, synthesizing can be a crucial skill. 

“If you want to know who’s going to do well in school, give them an IQ test. If you want to know who’s going to be a good synthesizer, send them to Laos for a month,” he joked. 

Something else Gardner learned from writing his memoir: “As you get older, what you had for breakfast fades from memory, but almost any little thing that you run into or you read about evokes something that you hadn’t thought about for decades.”

Beyond multiple intelligences, Gardner has become involved with what it means to be a good person. He’s a member of The Good Project at Harvard, which seeks to promote “excellence, engagement, and ethics in education, preparing people to become good workers and good citizens who contribute to the overall well-being of society.”

As Gardner told Big Think, he believes that in a foreseeable future, when much of education’s standard curriculum will be handled by artificial intelligence, educational institutions will instead “deal with citizenship and work, rather than how smart you are or how much you know.”

Speaking of AI, in the freshly written preface of the reissue of Frames of Mind, Gardner addresses the technology. He thinks the burden of proof now falls on those who deny that large language models understand. In his estimation, they already demonstrate at least four of MI theory’s eight intelligences: musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and naturalistic.

“If we have broadened the tent of intellect to include a variety of plant and animal species, we need to honor neural nets as well,” he wrote.

There may soon come a time when artificial intelligence essentially controls our lives, when it won’t matter what we think about how intelligent LLMs truly are. Dethroned as masters of Earth, it will become resoundingly clear that we were never the true arbiters of intelligence. Educators didn’t own it. Psychometricians didn’t own it. And as Gardner would humbly admit, he certainly doesn’t.

“Why us?” Gardner said. “So far, we’ve set up the criteria for intelligence, but what if dolphins got to do it? What if ChatGPT or Claude got to do it?” 

By theorizing multiple intelligences all those years ago, Gardner helped open that door, and he’s as curious as anyone else to see who or what walks through it in the next 40 years.