Frames of Mind

What do we mean when we call someone smart? That they are good at math and got a high score on the SAT? That they learn languages easily? Those traits might be what comes to mind first: they are what underly psychology’s classic definition of intelligence, and what we are told in school that a smart person can do. But they are not the whole story.

As Howard Gardner argues in the groundbreaking classic Frames of Mind, to limit our understanding of intelligence to “book smarts” misses much of what makes human beings amazing. Someone who plays an instrument well is exhibiting intelligence. So, too, someone who knows how to do physical comedy—is their mastery of their movements and the space around them not brilliant? And to have a profound knowledge of their own self, their relationships with others, and relationships between others, too, is to show great intelligence as well.

Gardner calls this the theory of multiple intelligences. But this isn’t just a book for intellectuals who want to argue about what intelligence is, or educators debating how to teach. It is for each of us. In an era of teaching to the test, and increasingly powerful artificial intelligence, Gardner’s work is a celebration of all the ways there are to be human.