Intelligence: The Development of a Concept

Abstract

It has been well said that psychology has a long past, but a short history. People have puzzled over psychological problems for thousands of years, ever since the dawn of recorded history, yet the development of a science of psychology is scarcely a hundred years old. Plato and Arisotle already discussed the notion of “intelligence”, but it is only in this century that attempts have been made successfully to measure this important variable. Many misunderstandings have attended this venture, and it will be one of the functions of this book to clarify the points on which these misunderstandings have arisen. However, before doing so it may be useful to trace quite quickly, and without too much detail, the early development of the concept with which this book is essentially concerned. Like most scientific concept, this one arose out of everyday observation. The concept of temperature arose from the different feeling caused in human beings by fire and sunlight, on the one hand, and ice and snow, on the other; in this way were the notions of “cold” and “hot” born, and became the subject matter of science. Similarly, the concept of intelligence arose from observations of people trying to solve problems, to learn difficult and demanding things like mathematics, languages, and history; some seemed to find no difficulty in all this, and succeeded brilliantly, while others were very slow, and often failed altogether.

A first-rate theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids; and a third-rate theory explains after the event. A. I. Kitagorodskii