Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences Research Paper

Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences - Research Paper Example But when it comes to business, the intelligent person can easily detect commercial opportunities, or is good in mastering or avoiding business risks and keep the books balanced. At the advent of the twenty-first century, there is a new intellectual virtuoso: the symbol analyst or the master of change. This is the one who can read numbers and words in the computer screen and make reliable and useful projects. Through the information from the computer, the analyst can solve problems, communicate to other people and adjust easily to the changing times. Francis Galton, one of the founders of the modern psychological measurement in the late nineteenth century, believed that intelligence is hereditary, and so searched for offspring of the leaders of British society. But Galton also believed that intelligence is not confined to hereditary lineages. He devised means to test intelligence. The first intelligence measurements tested the person’s sensory acuity, i.e. an intelligent person can easily distinguish sounds of different loudness, or the brightness of lightness, and objects of different weights. (Gardner, 1999, p. 2) Gardner (1999) presented evidence that individuals have a range of capacities and potentials, and he called this phenomenon multiple intelligences. Individuals can use these intelligences in the different roles in society. An individual with multiple intelligences can perform multiple tasks. Gardner presented his argument on the question scholars and students of intelligence have been arguing about: Is intelligence singular? Or, is there such a thing as multiple intelligences? There is also another question Gardner would like to address: Is intelligence predominantly inherited? Darwin wrote in his time that men did not differ much in intelligence except in their efforts and hard work. The Western notion remains that intelligence is innate in a person. (Armstrong, 2009, p.