“Strengthen your mind,” Lord Blackwood mutters menacingly to Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie’s film. “Behind your logic I feel a weakness …”. The Lord is bad, very bad, but he could be an obscure – and distorted – precursor of the Multiple Intelligences theory of Howard Gardner. Unlike the evil antagonist of the famous detective, the Harvard University professor studies the light areas of our brain and, after having identified seven of them, from the logical-mathematical one to the interpersonal one, now takes a further leap and explains us how to put them fruit and exploit the potential that nature and culture offer us. Not only can we strengthen the mind, we can improve it. In the name of daily efficiency and, last but not least, ethical values.
An inner journey
His new essay – The synthetic mind (published by Feltrinelli) – it is a journey first of all within oneself. After years of investigating the minds of others, he invites us to discover his, how it is made and how it works, in order to help us understand our individuality. Each of us is unique and must be aware of it to the right degree. “Write this book – Gardner says to Salute – it was a very long process. This is not something that is simulated in the laboratory. “
Instead, it was a path matured over time, the result of decades of psychological and neuroscientific studies, which condenses as follows: “The synthetic mind observes reality in its vastness and considers its many categories. It is only at a later time that The synthesis takes over. It is at that point – he adds – that one tries to put everything together in order to create a complete meaning. For oneself and also for the others. And consequently also social, since – the professor recalls – we are not islands, but beings immersed in multiple social networks.
The 7 intelligences
As sparks of different intensity, in us there are Seven Intelligences, namely logical-mathematical, linguistic-verbal, kinesthetic, visual-spatial, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and to these, recently, Gardner has added two others, the natural and existential. Supporting those that are most developed in each of us is a fundamental task. That we must learn to execute and continue every day and that society – above all the school – should favor (although – the professor points the finger – this is rarely the case). Knowing yourself, therefore, is less difficult than it seems: it means following your own inclinations. “I remember the mathematician John Von Neumann: he has been a genius since childhood. It is the demonstration that it is not necessary to waste too much time to discover oneself. Rather, it is preferable to make an effort to collaborate with others. We must therefore work on interpersonal intelligence “.
“Educate yourself”
Gardner’s advice is peremptory. “Educate yourself. Go ahead and do it!”. And he points out the other essential element that transforms a mind and finally makes it a synthetic mind. It is not enough to choose a problem and then analyze it in its many aspects, studying it and deepening it. We need to aim for solutions that go beyond common sense and, at least in some cases, change the way we think. “At the base, therefore, it is essential that there is a project”. Without goals you get lost in chaos. With goals you can make a difference. “This is why on several occasions I have criticized the mere use of the IQ, the intelligence quotient”.
Develop the mind
The conclusion is clear and drastic. In addition to investigating ourselves, as the professor did in his book, it is essential that the educational system aims, as has already occurred in the past and in other historical periods, to “develop the mind”. He explains: “The aim must be to push people to think better and to do so through five points: attention, analysis, reflection, connections, communication”. The obsession with scientific disciplines represents for him the example of a distortion. “I am skeptical of the emphasis on Stem alone”, the Anglo-Saxon acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“We also need the A of art, together with humanism and history”. And he adds: “We live in a world of human beings, yet we often seem victims of a new invention or a new discovery: first it happened with the atom, now with Artificial Intelligence. We never ask ourselves enough about the ethical implications of our knowledge and what we do “.
Pellai: “Children’s intelligence can be cultivated: here’s how
by Valeria Pini
