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“There’s a book I recommend for everybody: It’s Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind. It has helped me immensely.” – Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power

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.

Description

In
this groundbreaking
classic, a leading psychologist argues that there are many human intelligences
. 
 

“Brilliant.” —New York Review of Books
 
When we call someone “intelligent,” we are often referring to traits like their high SAT score, their performance on an IQ test, or their ability to perform in today’s schools—which prioritize linguistic and mathematical abilities. Traits like these underlie most popular and psychological understanding of intelligence—but they tell a very incomplete story. 
 
In this revolutionary classic, now updated with a new introduction, psychologist and educator Howard Gardner offers a dramatically different account: that by limiting our understanding of intelligence to “school smarts,” we miss the impressive range of talents and aptitudes that characterize the human species. Gardner instead posits the revolutionary theory of multiple intelligences, which encompasses musical ability to physical dexterity to deep knowledge of other persons—and of oneself—each of which merits the label “intelligence.” 
 
In a penetrating update, Gardner’s Frames of Mind celebrates all forms of intellect—the varieties found in various animal species, plants, and ever-more powerful instruments of artificial intelligence.