According

Varieties of Intelligence
Br. Isharupachaitanya
There are some terms that we use very often
but that are not easy to define. ‘Intelligence’ is
one such term. The word ‘intelligence’ comes
from the Latin intelligentia, and this from the verb
intelligere, a variant of intellegere, ‘to understand’,
which in turn is derived from inter, ‘between’, and
legere, ‘to choose’—literally, ‘choosing between’.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that intelligence
is (i) the ability to learn or understand or
deal with new or trying situations: reason; also: the
skilled use of reason; (ii) the ability to apply knowledge
to manipulate one’s environment or to think
abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests);
(iii) the act of understanding: comprehension.
Another definition of intelligence comes from
‘Mainstream Science on Intelligence’, which was
signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994: ‘A
very general mental capability that, among other
things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve
problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex
ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is
not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill,
or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader
and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—“catching
on”, “making sense” of things,
or “figuring out” what to do.’1
Multiple Intelligences
‘Multiple Intelligences’ is a psychological and educational
theory which proposes that an array of different
kinds of intelligence exists in each human being.
Psychologist Howard Gardner suggests that each individual
manifests varying levels of different types of
intelligence, and thus each person has a unique cognitive
profile. Gardner’s theory argues that intelligence,
as it is traditionally defined, does not adequately encompass
the wide variety of abilities humans display.
PB August 2009
He originally identified seven core intelligences (see
Table 1). In 1999 he added an eighth, the naturalistic
intelligence, and indicated that there may be another,
the existential intelligence.2
Danah Zohar, in her book Spiritual Intelligence,
The Ultimate Intelligence, argues that all our probable
kinds of intelligence can be linked to one of
the three basic neural systems in the brain, and that
Gardner’s classification of intelligence is actually a
variation of three basic varieties of intelligence and
their associated neural arrangements. According to
Zohar, the three basic types of intelligence are (i)
intellectual intelligence, (ii) emotional intelligence,
and (iii) spiritual intelligence.4 Though ‘Q’ originally
stood for ‘quotient’, iq, eq, and sq are used to
represent, for convenience, intellectual, emotional,
and spiritual intelligence respectively.
Apart from the all-too-popular iq, in recent
times eq and sq have also been the subject of a
considerable amount of research by various groups.
We take here a brief tour of these three types of
intelligence.
Intellectual Intelligence
Intellectual or rational intelligence refers to the intelligence
required to solve logical or strategic problems.
Psychologists have devised tests for measuring
it, and these tests have become the standard for
sorting people according to their degree of intelligence,
and thus their putative abilities. iq tests
have been found to be predictive of later intellectual
achievement, such as educational qualification.
They tell us about the rational capabilities of the
person under evaluation.
Psychologist Charles Spearman proposed, way
back in 1904, that there must be some general factor
of intelligence that the tests were measuring. He
465