The Fundamentals
The following chapter is reprinted with permission from the book, CHRYSALIS: The Arts and Multiple Intelligences by Kathleen Gaffney 1997

For the vast majority of educators with whom I have worked, the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) is a confirmation of what they know and have experienced in their classrooms. "If I could say it, I wouldn't have to dance it," Isadora Duncan once said. Teachers recognize in themselves and their students the intelligences, and throughout their professional lives as educators, have heard many experts describe learning styles, learning modalities and various terms that address the same area. The simplicity and elegance of Dr. Howard Gardner's theory taken together with the tide of reform in education and the technological revolution has produced a confluence of events, which bring MI Theory front and center.

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo

To understand arts and multiple intelligences applications, let us begin with a very basic overview of the concept of human cognition (also known as human information processing). Until now, it was believed that human intelligence was fixed at birth, a result of heredity, and that nothing much could affect the given amount a person had. If intelligence was a blob of clay, you could fashion your clay into specific shapes. Even if you had the same amount as someone else, the result might "look" different. One fact was indisputable, that blob was all the clay you had to work with, you couldn't get any more.

For decades, this was the assumption: If it was true that the amount of intelligence you had was fixed at birth, then it could be measured in your childhood. This measurement could be used to predict how well you would succeed. The idea was furthered at the turn of the century by the work of Alfred Binet, a Frenchman, who conceived of a "test" for intelligence. Intelligence testing swept across America and permeated every area of life from the military to business and industry. No area embraced testing with more relish than education. And why not? Here was an instrument that could measure progress and probable success. There was one slight problem. These tests may measure how well a student would do in school, but they often failed to predict how well that child would do in life. And so the stage was set for the volcanic effect of the work of Dr. Howard Gardner.

Dr. Gardner is Co-Director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine. He has received numerous prizes and awards including a Mac Arthur Prize Fellowship. He is the author of many books, most of which you will find listed in Chrysalis' bibliography. MI theory was developed from the following initiative:

In 1979, a small team of researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education was asked by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation of the Hague to undertake an inquiry on a grand topic: The Nature and Realization of Human Potential.
From Multiple Intelligences: The Theory In Practice by Howard Gardner

Why do teachers need to know anything about Dr. Gardner, the history of Project Zero, or theories of human intelligence? Because never in the history of public education has a new idea been responsible for such sweeping innovation in education. From the national level, at the US. Department of Education, to Key Schools that operate entirely on this theory, to development of alternative learning strategies, the arts are being looked at as a new path to reach these intelligences. Indeed this theory is the "best case for the arts" I have ever encountered.

Just a note of caution as I begin. In explaining MI Theory, as it is commonly known, I have been deliberately simple. Simplicity is a virtue in the arts. Please do not think that my elemental descriptions begin to capture the scope or complexity of this groundbreaking concept. My intention is to provoke educators to view human intelligence differently and to recommend that each educator conduct a further and more in depth study. My favorite books are Frames of Mind and Leading Minds, both written by the Dr. Gardner.

Like Dr. Gardner, I will use the word intelligence as "a convenient way of labeling some phenomena that may (but may not) exist." By his own criteria, again, vastly simplified, an intelligence: must have some sort of symbol system, have value in a cultural setting, and goods or services must be able to be made of it or around it and problems solved within it.

There are specifics to keep in mind about MI Theory:

• All human beings possess all nine intelligences.
  What makes us unique is the way in which they work together in each of us. There are those who possess more of one, for example, basketball player, Michael Jordan. A person with a disability may lack all but the most fundamental level. Yet someone with a disability may have their ability unlocked through another intelligence. I am thinking about Helen Keller, who could not speak with her voice or hear with her ears yet possessed a startling degree of linguistic intelligence. But this might never have been discovered unless her gifted teacher, Annie Sullivan, had not placed her hand in Helen's hand making the letter W with her three fingers. She then pushed the child's other hand into a pail of water. Over and over Annie thrust her three fingers against Helen's palm. This hand sign means water, the gesture said. And eventually it connected in Helen's brain. Now, anyone who has reads Helen Keller's writings is impressed with her use of language. Bodily-kinesethic teaching unlocked Helen's linguistic intelligence.

  I am only one, but still I am one. I may not do everything, but still I can do something. - Helen Keller

• Most people have the ability to develop the intelligences to a higher level.
  Even if we are one hundred and six years old, even if this is our last day on this earth, we can learn something new. In fact an article on Building a Better Brain published by Life magazine, July 1994, reports, ".. that scientists are beginning to understand that the brain has a remarkable capacity to change and grow, even in old age, and that individuals have some control over how healthy and alert their brains remain as the years go by." The research suggests that stimulating the mind with mental exercise may cause brain cells, called neurons, to branch wildly. The branching causes millions of additional connections, or synapses between brain cells. "Think of it," says Arnold Scheibel, director of UCLA's Brain Research Institute, "as a computer with a bigger memory board."
• The intelligences are always interacting with each other in complex ways.
  Think of a musician who plays a trumpet. In order to play well she must have musical intelligence probably well developed over years of training. But she must also have a high degree of Bodily-kinesethic intelligence to insure proper placement of the lips on the mouth piece, the arms, hands and fingers used to move valves and of course perfectly synchronized breath control to make the sound. In a concert the musician must interpret a composers work and get his message to the audience so she must employ interpersonal intelligence. If she is playing a jazz solo, she must use intrapersonal intelligence to tell her own story in music.
• There are many ways to be intelligent within each area.
  Let's use a musical example again. There is a young man who doesn't play an instrument or doesn't even seem to enjoy singing yet he can place his ear to the ground and by reading the sound vibrations, know how many buffalo there are, which direction they are moving and how fast they are coming. That is a high degree of musical intelligence. A woman may display a high degree of visual-spatial intelligence in the design of her home yet is incapable of reading a map. I make a mental picture of this concept this way with bands that represent strengths in specific areas.

There are also criteria to establish whether a given ability should be considered an 'intelligence'. Vastly simplified the criteria might look like this.

• There must have a symbol system
• It must have value in a culture
• Goods and services must be made from it or problems solved within it.

LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE
Linguistic intelligence is the ability to use words or symbols that stand for words to convey meaning. Our western culture is dominated by the written and spoken word. Yet reading scores continue to drop. Children today learn to speak and think from watching TV rather than from reading books as people did in the past. Politicians and lawyers use this intelligence, as do all sorts of writers. A great way to develop this intelligence in children is to place those who love language, such as writers and poets, in residence in our schools.

If we look at linguistic intelligence and apply Gardner's criteria we know it has a symbol system - the alphabet. Almost every culture including the deaf culture has a symbol system for words and ideas. Indeed there are many signed languages around the world. Since the beginning of time human beings have sought to form a way to express their thoughts and feelings in order to communicate.

When human found they could write thoughts and ideas in symbolic form they were no longer relegated to what they could remember. Memories of the tribe and what they had learned could be stored outside the brain. Hieroglyphics, cueiniform, Cherokee pictographs, the ancient Celtic form of writing, oghum, all display a symbol system. As human beings progressed through time one generation after another could learn and record for the next adding exponentially to our knowledge capacity. Upon this great civilizations were built.

Goods and services are certainly made from linguistic intelligence. From newspapers to plays to novels to the owner's manual in your car, ideas are most often transmitted via language, spoken or written. Is there value in our culture for the written or spoken word? Walk into a library or bookstore; listen to a newscast or spend time in nearly any classroom in America. The major way we transmit information in this country's classrooms is through language. Hopefully, the language the teacher is using is the one her students understand.

A high manifestation of linguistic intelligence occurs in someone like a journalist, a novelist or a playwright who manipulates syntax and meaning. Almost everyone has some degree of linguistic intelligence since its use permeates our culture. Even so, linguistic intelligence needs to be further developed. A perfect example of someone with a vast amount linguistic intelligence is a poet. A poet can take just a few words and infuse incredible meaning by placing them in certain order.

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes from The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in its, petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle, life is but a walking shadow,
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare

And my clothes don't fit me no more
I've walked a thousand miles just to shed this skin
From The Streets of Philadelphia
by Bruce Springsteen

There is no controversy that linguistic ability is intelligence. It is a vital path in our ability to learn, an intelligence certainly, but it is not simply one half of the whole story.

LOGICAL MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE
Logical/mathmatical Intelligence Is the ability to count, compare, calculate, and classify in order to understand the world around us. Highly valued in our country, much of our progress in the 20th century came as a result of ideas and products from science, engineering, and economics all requiring logical mathematical thinking. Yet, this intelligence requires creativity to produce invention. Einstein said, "Creativity is more important than knowledge."

This category of intelligence and its value in our culture has exploded during the 20th century. It has become the dominant god in our modern constellation, the rationale for life as well as the goal. Logical/mathematical intelligence is certainly wonderful, valuable, responsible for improving the conditions under which we live. It aids us immeasurably in our capacity to survive. It gave us vaccines, larger tomatoes, the stock market, television, cellular phones, the computer, video games, The Polls, our walk on the moon, Teflon, the microwave oven, the Internet, and the ability to obliterate the planet with the flick of a switch. With logical/mathematical intelligence delivering so much power into our hands, our culture has begun to trust the information we obtain only from this intelligence. Please do not misunderstand, I am terribly grateful that I live at a time where ultra-sound can show a fetus moving inside a woman's uterus. I am thankful that certain cancers can be cured. Medical science cured my own baby of cancer, but I feel the pendulum has swung too far.

To scrutinize this intelligence, let us first use Dr. Gardner's criteria. Mathematics and science both have symbol systems. Symbols are numbers, or equations, geometric shapes, formulas or icons. Practitioners of higher math say they speak a special "language". In chemistry, we have a periodic table, noble gases, atomic weight. We count electrons whirling around a specific number of neutrons and protons. As we count these infinitesimal specks, we know if it is helium or oxygen. All of this, useful fascinating information. Logical/mathematical intelligence is one path of understanding but is not a complete picture.

Continuing with the criteria, we look to see if logical/mathematical intelligence has value in our culture? Well if economics, purchasing power, the stock market and how we're doing in the polls are any measure, the answer is a resounding YES! And that yes is a global response. Can goods or services be made from this intelligence? In a previous paragraph I named many examples.

MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE

I think in sounds - Maurice Ravel

A composer sorts and groups sounds into patterns. He/she writes those patterns in notation so others who play instruments will interpret and produce the sounds for many to hear. Those who do not compose or play may have a great deal of musical intelligence, which has not been developed. Often, they become the most avid music lovers, collectors, record producers, musicologists, even disc jockeys. Musical intelligence is not strictly limited to a narrow definition but encompasses other interpreters of sounds such as doctors.

In France in 1816, Dr. Rene Theophile-Hycinthe Laennec, was a well-respected physician who treated heart ailments. The story recounted by the doctor himself goes this way.

A patient would be referred to Dr. Laennec if it were felt there was a heart problem. The doctor would evaluate the color, respiration and medical history of the patient. The final step was to listen to the heartbeat by placing the ear on the chest directly above the heart. Imagine the ability to discriminate and interpret sound such as activity would require. One day, an extraordinarily endowed woman was sent to Dr. Laennec. He took one look at her and knew he would never be able to hear her heartbeat. In desperation, he rolled a sheet of paper into a tube and placed one end on her chest and the other to his ear. The tube conducted the sound. He spent the next twenty years perfecting his new invention, finding the ideal materials. Dr. Laennec was also an avid flute player. He believed the flute led him to his invention - the stethoscope.

Sonar uses a high degree of musical intelligence. Cosmologists zeroed in on the Big Bang by listening to the traces of sound left over from that cataclysmic event. If we apply Dr. Gardner's criteria to musical intelligence, we find that music does have a symbol system. Music has great value in our culture. Music is used in our ceremonies, spiritual worship, when we court, marry and die. Some of the most highly paid individuals in our culture are musicians. Music is in our cars, malls, homes, and elevators. We alter moods with it, dance to it, and make love with it in the background. Mothers sing to their babies to reassure them or console them, and one has only to scan the music industry to find thousands of goods and services made from music. From tapping out rhythms on a desktop to remembering complex melodies, from humming to ourselves to noticing environmental sounds, all human beings have some level of musical intelligence. Musicians say it is because we all have a heart beat within us.

BODILY-KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE
This intelligence deals with physical movement and the knowledge of the body and how it operates. People who possess this intelligence develop a keen mastery over the motions of their bodies, (dancers, athletes), or are those who are able to manipulate objects with finesse (ballplayers, instrumentalists). This also includes those to whom the use of the body is central, such as a surgeon or physical therapist. People with this intelligence understand the world through their body, express ideas and feelings, and actually communicate to others physically. We see high manifestations of bodily kinesthetic intelligence in athletes, dancers, mimes or actors. We find it in those who work with their hands such as surgeons, sculptors, carpenters, weavers, and plumbers or crafts people. Gymnasts have it, as do acrobats. We see this intelligence in children who cannot sit still for long, those who are well coordinated, or those who need to touch things in order to learn.

Since this intelligence appears in so many diverse areas, we will examine only two. Let us apply the criteria to football. Is there a symbol system in football? Yes, there is the playbook. The same goes in almost every sport. Do sports have value in our culture? Can goods and services be made from athletics? Ask NBC, ask Nike, ask Reebok ask health club owners.

I have watched dancers make a shape in space and I knew that they understood something about the world that I didn't know. They communicated to the world through their bodies they received information back directly through their bodies. Is there a symbol system in dance? Yes, different systems of notation exist, most notably Laban. Does dance have value in our culture? This question always raises some controversy with dancers. They feel dance does not have enough value but it depends on the kind of dance. Social dance has long been a part of our culture's rituals. From tap dance in Broadway shows, to the Paul Taylor Dancers, to the American Ballet Theatre, dance is highly regarded, reviewed taught and criticized. Can goods or services be made from and around dance? From the typical Saturday morning dance classes, to tap shoes, MTV to Capezio the American landscape is rife with examples. As stated previously there are many ways to be intelligent within a category. So that bodily kinesthetic intelligences appears in those who "talk with their hands", jog to get a great idea or need to touch something in order to relate. I have directed actors who find it very difficult to act unless they have a prop in their hand. In the theatre they are known as 'prop actors'. It is actually difficult for them to relate or express themselves unless they are holding something in their hands.

VISUAL-SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE
Central to this intelligence is the ability to perceive the visual world accurately and in three dimensions. Individuals who exhibit this intelligence are architects, navigators, cosmologists, visual artists, filmmakers, choreographers, set designers, and chess players among others. It involves the ability to understand, perceive, internalize and/or transform space. A lighting designer is a perfect example. He/she sculpts space-using light. A choreographer must possess it to create patterns in space using human form. A coach for a sports team needs it to diagram plays. A topographer, a bridge builder, and a cosmologist who charts the heavens are all responding to the pull of this intelligence. Visual artists who can represent form, contrast, line, shape and color use this intelligence when they create.

People who have this intelligence often enjoy chess, like many colors, do jigsaw puzzles and can imagine the world from a bird's eye view. They are best taught using pictures or photographs or asking them to draw their ideas. They can find their way around a new city or building with little difficulty. When I walk into a classroom I can tell immediately if the teacher uses his/her spatial intelligence. There will be artwork everywhere. The desks will be on a diagonal. There will be mobiles hanging and bright colors evident.

Author's Note - The next two intelligences are my favorite. I have given many examples in the above intelligences of artists who work within each category but they cannot become masters without developing next two intelligences. (For more details on the Multiple Intelligences contact Artsgenesis, Inc.)

INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE
This governs our relationships with others. It is the ability to notice and make distinctions in other people's moods and feelings. When we inspire others, have compassion for or empathy with them, we are employing Interpersonal intelligence. Some of those who possess it are religious leaders, teachers and parents, therapists and counselors, coaches and directors. Business leaders point to interpersonal intelligence as essential in their work force. The performing arts ensembles in theatre, dance and music (working together as a group) develop it. This intelligence consists of the ability to understand, perceive and discriminate between people's moods, feelings, motives and intentions. In artists it is the ability to "read" their audiences, modulate their feelings, bring them to tears, make them laugh, provide them with insight into their lives. The artist must be an expert in the human terrain and "hold a mirror" to humanity.

Artists and human resource specialists have an abundance of this intelligence or they would never go into their field in the first place. In fact, some artists become too expert at reading others and become exhausted by it, because they are constantly doing it.

Teachers are highly interpersonally intelligent. It is probably what drew them into teaching. After several weeks with a class they are able to take the emotional temperature of every child simply by walking into the room. This intelligence also serves us in our personal relationships as well. It is our rudder; it is our gauge. How am I doing? Can I ask for the raise today? Do they love me? Are my children frustrated or angry? Will I break up with my husband?

Guidance counselors, rabbis, priests, reverends, psychiatrists all have a high degree of interpersonal intelligence. Politicians and salesman often manipulate with it, as do cult leaders. An extremely high manifestation of this intelligence is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who orchestrated a movement out of humanity. Other examples are Gandhi, or Hitler or Alexander the Great. Obviously, those who possess high degrees of this intelligence do not always use it for good.

Interpersonal intelligence has to be developed in students to get and hold a job. We need this intelligence to understand one another as our world continues to shrink and becomes a global economy. The performing arts develop interpersonal intelligence. Individuals must work together for a common good and a common goal.

INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE
This is the ability to have relationship with ourself. It is access to our own feelings, emotions, and our ability to tap inner resources. Words like discipline, independent will, perseverance and imagination all help describe this territory. A great man once said, "Everything in this world is created twice, first in our vision then in reality". This intelligence is responsible for creating that inner vision. Any art form will help develop this intelligence since they all require it. People who have this intelligence can delay their own gratification. They can discipline themselves to finish a book or complete a project, run a marathon, or stop fighting with a spouse. They are able to reflect on their life, gauge their growth, and learn from their mistakes. A person with this intelligence is self-referent. The opinion of others is second to their opinion of themselves.

The intrapersonal terrain is familiar territory to artists. For most artists this is where creation begins. A great man once said, "Everything in life is created twice, first in our vision, then in reality." Every person who has opened his or her own business knows the truth of that statement. Most artists are driven by an inner vision. The final art work that is produced may vary from the initial vision but the need to make it, compose it, choreograph it, write it, express it, in just that way, springs directly from this intelligence. The ability to envision marshals all the intelligences to collectively synergize the desired outcome. Many business leaders prize this intelligence today. Companies like IBM, AT&T, Motorola, Merck say they want creative thinkers, creative problem solvers. Yet, I feel that this is the area where our children are most deficient. Daniel Goleman, in his Emotional Quotient, reports on the dwindling of this intelligence. It seems as though our children can't delay their own gratification. So many children lack impulse control. They do not seem to have self-discipline or internal resources. The arts educate and stimulate development of interpersonal intelligence and if we want our children to have more an excellent way is to place more arts in our schools.

We see the beginning of intrapersonal intelligence in a person who makes lists. I'm not talking about a list that reads: buy milk; buy bread; drop off dry cleaning but one that reads: run two miles; make up with your mother; publish that book. This second list is intended to motivate and is an early step toward developing intrapersonal intelligence. Other early signs occur in children who are content to play or study alone, who can learn from failure, or tell you how they are feeling.

When human beings communicated with one another through letters we had a wonderful opportunity to strengthen this ability. It was not the act of writing the letter that did it but in reading the letter that we had just written. Here, on paper, we had captured how we felt twenty minutes ago. We could look back on ourselves. We could read the letter and notice that we seemed much angrier in the letter than we actually felt. To reflect that way in this day and age we would have to tape record our half of all the telephone conversations we have all day long and play them back at the end of the day in order to have such insights from our verbal engagements. Now with faxes and e-mail adults can engage in the self-reflection process like we did when we wrote letters.

When we keep journals and diaries and read them on a regular basis we enhance our intrapersonal intelligence. I am convinced that the portfolio movement in education was created, in part, to address this deficit in our children.

When I began writing this chapter, I intended to highlight Carl Jung, father of modern psychiatry and psychotherapy as a perfect example of intrapersonal intelligence. I wanted to share my view of him by using his words. "He is in possession of his life who is in possession of his story". A sublimely intrapersonal idea. I wanted to share the work of Thomas Moore, psychologist and author of Care of the Soul. His work has focused on helping individuals find their story. Or by sharing the work of Joseph Campbell, who spent his life finding the story of our civilization through our art and myths. But every time I sat down to write I kept getting an image of another man, of a man who had lost two children and who sustained such losses in his life as would crush anyone else.

This man's father regularly beat him.
At the age of seven his mother died.
He attended school very briefly.
He failed in business at age 31.
Was defeated in a legislative race at age 32.
Failed again in business at age 34 and lost almost everything.
Lost the love of his life at age 35.
Had a nervous breakdown at age 36 and stayed in bed for six months.
Lost an election at age 38.
Lost a congressional race at age 43.
Got married to a difficult woman.
He lost a four-year-old son to typhoid.
Lost a congressional race at age 46.
Lost a congressional race at age 48.
Lost a senatorial race at age 55.
Failed in an n effort to become vice-president at age 56.
Lost a senatorial race at age 58.
Was elected president of the United States at age 60.
Was steward of our country during our greatest travail, the Civil War.
He gave orders for battles that killed hundreds of thousands human beings for whom he felt a personally responsibility.
He endured the acrimony and hounding of the press who dubbed him the original gorilla.
A second son Willie died while Lincoln was in the White House.
His wife Mary Todd was so deeply troubled, instead of being a helpmate she was another major problem.
After Willie's death Mary Todd was permanently emotionally disabled.
How can a heart sustain so many blows and still go on beating?

On one occasion President Lincoln was heard to say, "If there is a place worse than hell I am in it." Yet, he is remembered for his incredible perseverance, the ability to endure and prevail, for his wit, humorous stories, his jokes and his wisdom. For example: "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally'. "I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if, at the end when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me." He must have had a powerful inner vision that kept him moving forward.

His humor was not sophisticated but always hit its mark. When speaking about a general, who had made a major tactical error he said, "The general is confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head". When members of his cabinet put pressure on him to rescind the Emancipation Proclamation he remarked, "I am a slow walker but I never walk back." About a general who was boasting of success before a battle, "The hen is the wisest of all the animals in creation because she never cackles until after the egg is laid". One of my favorite moments demonstrates Lincoln's tender side. "Doll Jack is pardoned by order of the President." was a written pardon for his son's soldier doll. The doll was forever getting into trouble for serious offenses such as desertion and sleeping on duty.

Like all of the intelligences this one can be developed to a higher level. People can develop their intrapersonal intelligence if they keep a regular journal, go through psychotherapy, take performance enhancement seminars or human growth potential courses. Many corporate training programs, like the Covey Leadership Center's Seven Habits Training TM, divide their course into interpersonal and intrapersonal development. Creating a personal mission statement is one such intrapersonal activity. People also work on this intelligence if they have been through a Twelve-Step Program. I believe that other ways of developing this intelligence are reflecting, meditating or praying, gardening or watching waves crash on the beach.

The following written excerpts express intrapersonal intelligence and are studied in most schools in the United States.

Dear Diary,
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of the millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

Yours,
Anne Frank

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals.
William Shakespeare

T.S. Eliot

for the piece to display humor. And I need sound. Perhaps we could find a sound improviser who could sample three thousands sounds into a Quarg T#3 so I could have the sound like these waves on demand. Thinking these thoughts I have employed intrapersonal intelligence.

Writing them down, choosing the words, editing and rewriting has employed linguistic intelligence.

NATURALIST INTELLIGENCE
This is the ability to understand, classify and interpret the natural world and use features of the environment. Farmers, veterinarians, vintners, great chefs, use this intelligence, as do individuals such as Charles Darwin and Jacques Cousteau.

This intelligence was the one most recently identified yet ironically was probably the first to be developed in the human species. Our ancestors used it to identify those plants that were edible, which animals were friendly and which were not. We used naturalist intelligence to find and create medicine from living things. Having naturalist intelligence guides our interactions with animals. When Jane Goodall was young she wanted to bring handfuls of worms to bed with her because she thought they might be cold and lonely. She grew up to understand more about gorillas and their behavior than anyone alive. Farmers, vintners (winegrowers and makers), gardeners, are all exercising and developing their naturalist intelligence as they work. A person with naturalist intelligence reacts and responds to the environment and animals, vegetables and minerals with understanding and insight. Meteorologists, who study weather, storm chasers and ships captains must have knowledge of the physical world to operate effectively. Hunters, fishermen and women, a diviner who uses a dowser to find water and farmer who tastes the soil to tell him when to plant have spent years noticing the patterns of nature and have an internal catalogue that guides them. Botanists, zoologists, veterinarians, and anthropologists have studied and mastered highly technical systems and operations that measure and predict patterns of the natural world in a more formalized way. Every child engages this intelligence as they watch ants carry a sugar granule or a slug leave a slimy trail. They develop it while watering a garden or learning to value the environment by recycling or planting a tree. Scientific research demonstrates inroads into autism when a child interacts in the water with dolphins or while riding horses. Even cowboys captured the essence of naturalist intelligence in the adage, ?There?s nothin? better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.? Great chefs and prefumers are extremely creative in combining flavors and scents to create new concoctions. Many of us use recreation and vacation time to engage ourselves in the natural world. Walking on the beach, listening to the waves, skiing in light powder, hiking, hills, seeing the Grand Canyon, exploring the redwoods of Muir Woods take human beings out of their daily encounters with inanimate objects like cell phones and computers to a time when we were nourished by nature. Indeed humans still operate within the natural world regardless of the messages in movies like Matrix. We have more in common with a horse than a computer. It still takes cycles of development to reach puberty, nine months for a baby to gestate, time for our food to digest. Our deep naturalist intelligence can be awakened and more available to us at any time we simply need to stop, go outside and look at the night sky.

EXISTENTIAL INTELLIGENCE
If we think of the word existence and wonder about who we are, why we live and the meaning of life itself we are engaging our Existential Intelligence. Dr. Gardner calls it, ? a concern with "ultimate" issues.? Hammaurbi must have wondered what made a life well lived so much so that he developed codes to assure that human behavior around him was consistent with his own ideals. It is easy to look at Socrates, Plato and the other philosophers and being ignited by existential intelligence. We hope that our Supreme Court justices are enlightened by it and do not simply read existing law. The transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson went to Walden Pond and ended up writing about their experiences of existential intelligence. Many people wonder if we are alone in the universe or if other life forms really do exist.

The great religious leaders were following their instincts, investigating their own existential intelligence when people noticed and became followers. From their teaching great religions emerged. From Jesus to Mohammed from Martin Luther to Chief Joseph, human beings have structured paths to help them grapple with questions of life after death, truth, goodness, virtues and faults. More is being written and discovered about this intelligence every day and we look to the future to provide us with a deeper understanding of this intelligence.

Resource list

• Gardner, H. Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1985.
• Gardner, H. "Developing the Spectrum of Human Intelligences: Teaching in the Eighties, a Need to Change." Harvard Educational Review 57 (May 1987): 187-93.
• Gardner, H. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
• Lazear, D. Seven Ways of Knowing: Teaching for Multiple Intelligences. Palatine, Ill.: Skylight, 1991.
• Lazear, D. Seven Ways of Teaching: Teaching with Multiple Intelligences. Palatine, Ill.: Skylight, 1991.
• Sternberg, Robert J. The Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.

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