Rethinking Intelligence
Do we need to re-think our notion of ‘intelligence?’
How many times have you heard people describe David Beckham as ‘thick?’ Einstein is clever, David Beckham is thick, is how it seems to me to be the attitude towards intelligence. We don’t need to question Einstein’s intelligence, obviously, but I think we do need to question how we can describe someone like David Beckham as thick.
In an article in the Telegraph in 2002 David Beckham was described as the ‘Einstein of football physics.’ To quote from the article:
‘”The man can carry out a multi-variable physics calculation in his head to compute the exact kick trajectory required, and then execute it perfectly,” said Dr Keith Hanna. Beckham’s brain “must be computing some very detailed trajectory calculations in a few seconds purely from instinct and practice. Our computers take a few hours to do the same thing and, although we can now better explain the science of what he does, it is still magical to watch.”’
I feel there is a problem in the way we too often classify people who are intellectually bright as clever and people who aren’t as thick. Maybe this is to make ourselves feel more intelligent, or less stupid, or maybe we like to put people in boxes to feel safe; or maybe we just don’t understand or aren’t conscious of the different aspects of intelligence.
Having been brought up in an English public school and generally being towards the bottom end of the class for most subjects I often felt thick, and frustrated that I was apparently a ‘lesser human’ than the ‘cleverer’ people in my class. Little or no emphasis was put on different types of intelligence at my school. If you were good at sport you would get some credit, but you may still be labeled as thick even if you were in ‘the firsts.’ People who did DT and Art were generally seen as drop outs or no-hopers. One friend of mine at school described my A level choices (Art, Theatre Studies and Sports Science) as ‘activities’ implying that they were not proper subjects; and I’m sure many people still believe that to be true, but for myself I am thrilled to be earning a living and spending most of my time doing ‘activities’ still very closely related to those subjects. It’s sad now to look back on that now and observe that I was seen as less intelligent or inferior when what I was actually doing was studying the things I was passionate about, talented in and which I am now pursuing as hobbies and as a career.
The broader truth is that intelligence can come in forms other than just the intellectual form. Carl Jung developed a theory that there are four different psychological types based on four functions: Feeling, Thinking, Intuition and Sensing. He found that whilst we all have the capacity for all four we tend to have two which are more dominant. So a person can be a ‘Thinking and feeling type’ or an ‘Feeling and sensing type’ for example. Einstein is obviously very high on the thinking spectrum, which is how most people seem to define intelligence. David Beckham does not have a very dominant thinking function, it seems, but he is without a doubt at a genius level on the sensing function. ‘Sensing’ people are very good with their bodies. They ‘sense’ their surroundings with their body. Dancers, sportsmen and individuals who are good with their bodies tend to be ‘sensation’ type people. People like Tom Daley are on the genius level of the sensation function. I wonder how many people realize the sophistication and body intelligence that is needed for someone like Tom Daley to do what he does? Or for David Beckham to do what he does. David Beckham is a genius, there is no doubt about it. He’s just not a thinking type of genius.
The other psychological types are intuition and feeling. The intuitive people are the people that don’t need to think, they just know, a bit like two hunters tracking animals in the wild, one looks at the footprints and ‘thinks’ his way to working out where the buffalo are and the other just knows they are north east, he doesn’t know why he knows, he just knows. The people who just know, are the people with strong intuition functions. It should be noted that apparently intuition is only correct 50% of the time though! So they don’t always know for sure! Again we all have these different functions, but two will be more dominant than the rest.
The other type of psychological type ‘feeling.’ People with strong or dominant ‘feeling’ functions are (obviously) good with feelings, they know or can feel how people feel, they have huge feelings themselves, they can empathize with people deeply and feelings seem to just come off them in waves. People with a big feeling function often tend to be actors. So someone with a genius feeling function could for example be an actor who so deeply, accurately and with beautiful nuance lives out as a character in a situation with feelings just coming off them like waves. This is another form of genius. When you see all the different characters and emotions that Meryl Streep can act out, can we deny her genius? I don’t know how good she is at physics but it would be a shame to call her thick just because she can’t memorize a periodic table. That’s chemistry, I know. Again, you can have actors who are ‘thinking’ or ‘intuition’ dominant, there’s no black and white or concrete rule, it’s just a way of understanding who we are. We all have these four functions but as I said two will be more dominant than the others.
I feel that it is unhelpful for us to categorize people as ‘stupid’ because they aren’t a ‘thinking’ type and when they might be like Beckham a genuine genius in the ‘sensation’ type. It would be more helpful to really look at where people’s passions and talents lay and be open to seeing them in broader and dare I say more intelligent perspective.
For myself, I would have liked to have had an education where these functions were validated, developed and explored with equal value and not have felt humiliated for not being intellectually intelligent. It is a great shame that so many people I know who are now brilliant artists, set designers, actors, writers were at school described as ‘thick.’ Knowing about these different functions, and that everyone has different functions which are dominant, it makes me wonder whether we need to re-think how we use and ascribe the word ‘intelligent.’
By Harry ter Haar
