Howard Gardner : the myth of Multiple Intelligences

activity the defining characteristic of our human nature? Human beings are into all
sorts of other things than the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. So why highlight
these?

[c] Another departure since 1983 has been Gardner’s new distinction between
„intelligence’ and „domain’ (1999a:82). The former is „a biopsychological potential
that is ours by virtue of our species membership’. The latter is a „socially constructed
human endeavor’, for example „physics, cooking, chess, constitutional law, and rap
music’. It is „characterized by a specific symbol system’. Gardner says he could have
made this distinction more carefully in 1983. Readers would then have seen more
clearly that several intelligences can be applied in the same domain, and the same
intelligence in many domains.

This move detaches from each other the two dimensions - the biological and the
social - which Gardner tried to hold together through his career. It makes MI theory
unintelligible. For it has always been part of the concept of an intelligence that it is an
ability that develops from a physiological origin towards an end-state belonging to a
valued social activity. The 1999 version separates the previously inseparable and puts
end-states firmly on the side of the social - as attached to domains rather than
intelligences. At the same time, the „criteria’, which remain unchanged from 1983,
include reference to end-states among the distinguishing features of intelligences. This
is why the 1999 version of MI theory is unintelligible.

MI and education

Until the van Leer project Gardner was a psychologist, not an educationalist. But he
had to adhere to the van Leer request that the Project „would assist educational policy
and practice throughout the world’. (Gardner 1983: x). In Frames of Mind Gardner

touched on some educational implications of the theory in the concluding
chapters. This decision turned out to be another crucial point because it was
educators, rather than psychologists, who found the theory of most interest.
(2003:4)

Since 1983 MI theory has had a huge influence on educational reform, especially
school improvement, across the world. It has affected its views about pupils and their

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