Starting with my favourite quote: what one of the most intelligent men had to say about intelligence…

“Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”    Albert Einstein

In the random way that the brain works I found myself thinking about creativity and how as a society we tend to lump people in to categories of intelligence such as ‘the science guys’ or ‘the creative ones’.  It use to be that intelligence was measured only on a scale of a persons ability to add, multiply, subtract.  That if you took science and maths it was “Oh my god your so smart”.

I want to believe that in todays society we measure intelligence on different scales, I think at some point in our lives – perhaps at the beginning of our education – people make a choice about what intelligence they want to posses – hence I think we all hold the ability, at some point, to be a good mathematician or a good artist or musician.

It is the nurture side of the nature/nurture debate which argues that it is the environment we are exposed to, that we grow up in which will help guide us to which ‘form’ of intelligence we may ‘chose’. True we all have our strengths, but I think that with practice people are capable  of all kinds of intelligence.  So rather than saying ‘I’m just not good at that’ perhaps the real truth is that it is not something that you are interested in or that you are passionate about.

For example somebody who is able to invent something, to foresee what tomorrow might need or people might want, might not think of themselves as creative but rather a scientist – however to invent something is, to me, a very creative thing.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/disproved-theories-about-human-intelligence.htm – 10 disproved theories about intelligence.