How do you imagine an intelligent person?Like a politician, like Winston Churchill, or a spiritual guide like Pope Francis?For many years, science has thought that only?They were intelligent, those whose ability to think logically and mathematically was very good, until a son of World War II refugees, named Howard Gardner (United States, 1943), began to challenge and expand intelligence frontiers. Not content with this, this visionary also proposed the five types of spirit the world needs to meet the challenges of the future.
Gardner was a follower of Piaget and his concept of logical-mathematical intelligence, but our particular psychologist, who was also a musician, began to wonder if artists also lacked intelligence. When the 20th century began, did he? A system of psychology, he argued that intelligence was a general and unique skill, inherited from our parents and unalterable.
- Fortunately.
- This rigid structure collapsed in the 1980s.
- When Gardner studied cognitive development.
- From this critical moment.
- He broke away from the “System”.
- Proposing that intelligence constitutes a set of multiple and varied skills.
- Independent of each other; Where is the “weakness” in one area that does not guarantee strength in another.
- And vice versa.
- They’re multiple intelligences.
No longer as a psychologist, but as a philosopher, Gardner reflects on the changes that scientific and technological advances and globalization have brought to humanity. According to him, it takes five minds to make the complex and stimulating world around us prosper.
1. La disciplined mind. It has two aspects: accumulating knowledge in basic areas such as language, history, science, mathematics, etc. and the second aspect is to master the thinking of certain disciplines; that is, to think like a scientist or an artist, for example.
2. La a synthetic mind: it is one that, having a disciplined (trained) mind, can discriminate important information from what is not, intertwine ideas from different sources, creating a coherent whole that is more than the sum of the parties and makes sense.
3. The creative spirit: it is the spirit of the adventurer who, based on what he learned through discipline and the ability to synthesize, risks going beyond the known and questioning him, to create new theories, products and ideas.
4. The respectful spirit: it can accept and accept differences in appearance, beliefs and customs between different cultures, provided that they do not pose a threat to common well-being. Anyone with a respectful mind is able to work in harmony with people from different cultures.
5. La ethical mind: it is governed by moral principles, asking how it would feel if others observed that it behaves as it does. To develop the mind, the right example must begin with the home, institutions, and other inspiring characters they model. positive behaviors.
How, then, are multiple intelligences and the five spirits of the future linked?Can we say that intelligences are different? They operate in our minds, while the five spirits are the predispositions that, according to Gardner, we must successfully develop. meet the goals of the future. Thus, these spirits feed on different intelligences.
Do you have the spirit we need for the future?
Image credits: Nejron Photo