Zhenyu Bian (Jack)
Teddy Chocos
Seminar 126G
9/29/13
Intelligence
What is intelligence? It is difficult to define the word “Intelligence” because
intelligence has many meanings and a huge range. Some people think intelligence is an
ability to solve different problems; some people consider intelligence is gift, and only
genius has high intelligence; some people regard a problem—solving skill as
intelligence; different people have different ideas, and each one has own opinion about
intelligence. Most people want to be intelligent or wisdom, but for normal people
intelligence only survive as an ideal, so people often say, “I dream to be intelligent.” It
is visible that intelligence has become a significant goal for a person, so how to be
intelligent is another problem for people. What methods can people use to help them to
become an intelligent person? It is a key problem that people are concerned with.
Therefore, the following article will illustrate what intelligence is, and discuss how to
become intelligent by special example.
Intelligence has many definitions, but the true intelligence is to be professional in
one area. Isaac Asimov who is a well-respected writer on general science earned a
doctorate from Columbia University. He writes an article named “What is intelligence,
Anyway?” In Asimov’s writing, he took an aptitude test, and he scored 160; a normal
was 100. He is highly intelligent, but he doesn’t know how to fix his car. When his car
broken, he has to find an auto-repair man who could not have scored more than 80 in
the test to fix his car. Also he is “defeated” by a joke of auto-repair man; that makes
him to think about it. From the article, we can see Asimov has high intelligence and
gets good education, but he still can’t fix his car that is not his area. The auto-repair
man is professional in fixing cars; in some way he is smart. As Asimov says, “In a world
where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do
something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I could do poorly.” (Asimov 187）
In other words, Asimov believes he isn’t good at everything; he also could do poorly
without his talent and academic training even though he has high intelligence. So first
of all, almost people have intelligence except someone has trouble in their cerebra. In
childhood, people don’t know what they are good at; they just learn and play, so they
can’t find out their intelligence. However, they get more and more knowledge as they
become older and older; at the same time they accumulate a lot of experience; they can
know what they are interested in, and learn it faster than others. So they have acquired
their intelligence which means they find one area that they are good at, and they can be
professional in this area one day.
At the same time, Intelligence can be improved after acquiring it. Knowledge and
experience are best ways to improve person’s intelligence; people can get new
knowledge from books, internet, teachers, life, and people can find out which is
meaningful for their area; it helps them become professional. Also in “Big Bang
Theory”, Sheldon is a genius in physics, but at the same time, he is stupid in
interpersonal skill. He is often bad at chatting with others, so sometimes his friends
disgust him. No one could do well in everything even genius, everyone has weakness.
Howard Gardner, a leading critic of traditional ideas about intelligence and IQ
testing, conducts a research about multiple intelligences; he also obtained a Ph.D. from
Harvard University. In his article “The theory of Multiple Intelligences”, Gardner calls
it MI theory, and he introduce 7 different kinds of intelligences of human beings from
MI theory including musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, logicalmathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal
intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence. Gardner considers that an intelligence
entails the ability to solve problems or fashion products that are of consequence in a
particular cultural setting or community; as Gardner states, “The problem-solving skill
allows one to approach a situation in which a goal is to be obtained and to locate the
appropriate route to that goal” (Gardner 109). In other words, Gardner believes that
problem-solving skill is important for a person, which is the basis of intelligence. It is
related to the point—to be professional; people have learnt a lot about his/her field, and
people can solve many problems and difficulty in their field, so people have mastered
problem-solving skill before they become professional. In a word, to be professional in
one area is intelligence.
How to become intelligent is another puzzled problem. There is a survey on the
internet, made by Robert J. Sternber (1981), a group of people was asked to define what
they meant by intelligence. Their answers indicated three major components of
intelligence. First was the problem-solving ability. People who reason logically and
identify more solutions to problems were seen as intelligent. Second, verbal abilities
were thought to exemplify intelligence. Finally social competence, that is the ability to
show interest in others and interact effectively with people, was viewed as indication
of intelligence. From this survey, we can see most people think problem-solving ability,
verbal ability and social competence are three ways to be intelligent; this survey may
give some suggestion for us. Here is a special example about a person who is considered
as an intelligent person.
His name is Yun Ma, and his English name is Jack Ma; he is a Chinese businessman
which earns a lot of honor, for example, in May 2009, Ma was honored by Time
magazine with inclusion into the Time 100 list of the world’s 100 most influential
people, which is the first Chinese businessman showing up on Time magazine; in
September 2010, Ma was selected by <<Fortune Magazine>> as “the most intelligent
50 CEOs”, and he is the fourth one. Jack Ma is a creative guy; he established original
internet company in China in 1995, but state-owned internet business was set up after
4 months later. So internet is a new thing at that time, Chinese people are strange to
internet. Jack Ma is so creative that he realize that internet will be popular in the world,
and the company earned 1 million dollars. In the article “Creativity is the highest form
of intelligence” by Jeff Dance who is founder and CEO of Fresh Consulting, he
mentions, “Creativity is the highest form of intelligence because it goes beyond
knowledge recall and extends into knowledge creation.” (Dance Paragraph 1)Dance’s
point is that creativity is the most important element to become intelligent, creativity
and innovation require some novel form of intelligence that is of a higher order. The
most outstanding personality of Jack Ma is creativity; he is also a pioneer of e-business
in China, and he created Alibaba and Taobao (like eBay). It is groundbreaking because
Chinese people have no idea about shopping online, and people can’t imagine they can
buy goods on the internet. However, Jack Ma is full of creativity; he promotes ebusiness, and he improves a new business model called B2B (business to business).
That makes him become great successful; in 2005, Ma was selected by the World
Economic Forum as a “Young Global Leader”. As Jeff Dance mentions, “Highly
creative people have a higher correlation with intelligence than vice versa suggests
creativity is simply a higher form of intelligence.” (Dance Paragraph 2) It is visible that
creativity is a prerequisite for intelligence.
The second one is social competence. Nowadays, people are the biggest resource
in society; you study with people, you work with people, you live with people; you
cannot live alone, so social competence becomes more and more significant. Jack Ma
is good at social competence; Jack Ma was elected student chairman when he was in
the college, and Ma first started building websites for Chinese companies with the help
of friends in the US. This point is related to MI theory of Gardner; MI theory contains
interpersonal intelligence. According to Gardner, “Interpersonal intelligence builds on
a core capacity to notice distinctions among others” (Gardner 295). Interpersonal
intelligence allows one to understand and work with others. It is a good way to learn
from others by social competence, and social competence even can help us to read the
intention and desires of others; social competence also contribute to distinguish
difference between people. Jack Ma found a American to be his friend when he was in
the college because he know the American person was good at computer, and Ma
wanted to learn from that person.
The third one is the sense of judgment which is a little abstract; in other words, an
intelligent people has a penetration to predict something, and grasp the opportunity; it
is a kind of intuition such as Jack Ma. He predicts the future of internet, and devote into
this field. Intelligent person is able to see through facts. The fourth one is endeavor.
Jack Ma knew nothing about computer when he first contacted Internet, but he learnt
computer from his friends and studied by himself. Ma failed the entrance exam twice,
he even got 19 points in Math exam, but he never give up, and at the third time he
succeeded. Intelligence is not easy to have; you have to pay a lot effort to add your
knowledge, to improve your self-cultivation, to accumulate your experience. So there
are four elements for being intelligent, each one is necessary.
Intelligence isn’t a dream for people. To be professional in one area is intelligence;
intelligence also can be improved by knowledge and experience. If a person possess
creativity, social competence, judgment, and endeavor, he is going to approach to
intelligence.
Work cited
Asimov Isaac, “What is intelligence, Anyway?”
Dance Jeff, “Creativity is the highest form of intelligence”, September 13, 2008
Gardner Howard, “The theory of Multiple Intelligences”, 1983