WWH ~~ Wake'N'Bake 101: You're Spatial!

"What Is It?" (Waits a bit...)"Sand": Peter Donnely, the Sand-Dancer
INTELLIGENCE: Given the hour, Dr. Woody hopes that any visitors have the ten minutes you will be SORRY if you don't invest in this video.



"What Is It?" (Waits a bit...)"Sand": Peter Donnely, the Sand-Dancer

Background: Have you ever heard of Howard Gardner, the MIT psychologist who won a certain renown/notoriety about 30 years ago for proposing the "theory of multiple intelligences." I was an early and am still am an ardent convert to the then-the novel insight that "intelligence" was not a "singular" phenomenon; that in fact, there were more than a few "kinds of intelligence." He enumerated seven at first, and has grown the list to nine.

Indeed, Gardner's fundamental insight is that what had hitherto been called 'talents' were in fact the expressions of very different ways of being-in-the-world, in almost Heideggerian sense. From that one may adduce that the actual "meaning" of "Intelligence" is to be derived, not from one or two particular skills practiced in a vacuum such as "school," but from HOW one masters the environment epistemically.

That is, y/our "kind of intelligence" is a shorthand for "how we/you KNOW the world." There are many ways to do it. The original seven were: Spatial, Linguistic, Mathematico/deductive, Physico/kinesthetic, Musical, Inter-personal and Intra-personal. Gardner added "Naturalistic," and is said to be considering "Existential." They're pretty self-explanatory. Follow the link for more elaboration.

All of us possess ALL of these capabilities; only, to some, greater-or-lesser degree of competence within these several 'anthropological' predispositions and competences. For example, though: If you are or have ever known someone who was deeply self-identified as a musician, you are soon made aware that that person knows the world in a way in which, unless you are also a musician, you will NEVER know it. It's the same for athletes. REAL athletes know the world through sensors and sensations others among us can only imagine.

So, to the video: Witness "Spatial" intelligence, writ LARGE.

This is the best explication/exemplification of Gardner's "spatial" intelligence I've ever seen, or that I can imagine. This guy INHABITS "perspective." He totally and thoroughly KNOWS what he is doing, AND what doing it does. "Genius" is the only word for such complete mastery of the medium. It's what makes 'artists' artists, and the extent that they can convey how MUCH they inhabit it is a big factor on any index of their "art."

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