{"product_id":"a-synthesizing-mind-isbn-9780262044264","title":"A Synthesizing Mind","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn authority on the human mind reflects on his intellectual development, his groundbreaking work, and different types of intelligences—including his own.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eHoward Gardner's \u003ci\u003eFrames of Mind\u003c\/i\u003e was that rare publishing phenomenon—a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this influential book laid out Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. It debunked the primacy of the IQ test and inspired new approaches to education; entire curricula, schools, museums, and parents' guides were dedicated to the nurturing of the several intelligences. In his new book, \u003ci\u003eA Synthesizing Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, Gardner reflects on his intellectual development and his groundbreaking work, tracing his evolution from bookish child to eager college student to disengaged graduate student to Harvard professor. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGardner discusses his mentors (including Erik Erikson and Jerome Bruner) and his collaborators (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and others). Comedian Groucho Marx makes a surprise (non-)appearance, declining Gardner's invitation to chat with Harvard College students, in favor of “making a living.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout his career, Gardner has focused on human minds in general, or on the minds of particular creators and leaders. Reflecting now on his \u003ci\u003eown\u003c\/i\u003e mind, he concludes that his is a “synthesizing mind”—with the ability to survey experiences and data across a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. The thinkers he most admires—including historian Richard Hofstadter, biologist Charles Darwin, and literary critic Edmund Wilson—are exemplary synthesizers. Gardner contends that the synthesizing mind is particularly valuable at this time and proposes ways to cultivate a possibly unique human capacity.\u003c\/p\u003eIntroduction ix \u003cbr\u003ePart I The Formation of a Synthesizing Mind \u003cbr\u003e1 My Ten-Year-Old Mind 3 \u003cbr\u003e2 Weighing Tests and Tracks 19 \u003cbr\u003e3 Discovering Enduring Interests and Alluring Approaches 35 \u003cbr\u003e4 Resisting a Single Frame 63 \u003cbr\u003e5 Assembling a Network of Enterprises 91 \u003cbr\u003ePart II Multiple Intelligences: Reframing a Human Conversation \u003cbr\u003e6 Steps toward Frames 109 \u003cbr\u003e7 Reactions to MI 129 \u003cbr\u003e8 MI in the World 141 \u003cbr\u003e9 Putting MI in Its Place 159 \u003cbr\u003ePart III Unpacking the Synthesizing Mind \u003cbr\u003e10 On to Education and Good Work 177 \u003cbr\u003e11 My Scattered Pursuits and the Mind That Connects Them 197 \u003cbr\u003e12 Understanding the Synthesizing Mind 211 \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments 237 \u003cbr\u003eAppendix: List of Blog Posts by the Author 239 \u003cbr\u003eBibliography 245 \u003cbr\u003eIndex 249\"An insightful memoir from an eminent psychologist.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e – \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An easy and worthwhile read.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In a world where brains and neurons have too readily been exploited as explanations for human behavior, Howard Gardner’s much awaited memoir takes us in a different direction: into the life of the mind. More impressively still, this deeply reflective text opens up to every reader’s inspection the extraordinary mind in the life of one of the greatest and most frequently cited intellectuals of modern times.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– Andy Hargreaves, Research Professor, Boston College; author of \u003ci\u003eMoving: A Memoir of Education and Social Mobility\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a personal yet objective account of the evolution of a peerless scholar. Howard’s reflective storytelling and his insightful narration of the events that shaped him are a joy to read, giving us an intimate insight into how multiple, often seemingly disparate threads intertwine to shape an exceptional mind.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– Kiran Bir Sethi, Founder, The Riverside School and Design for Change\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It’s been quipped that theories in psychology are true of those who propose them, and that’s certainly the case with Howard Gardner: creative, openminded, artful, disciplined, and in command of multiple intelligences. It’s a cause for celebration that one of our most influential living psychologists has trained his insight onto his own life and work.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; author of \u003ci\u003eHow the Mind Works\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eEnlightenment Now\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Read this book for Gardner’s self-reflection — a mind that synthesizes ideas writing about how it came to be a mind that synthesizes ideas — and for what he has to say about the changing academic and intellectual world around him. Are we narrowing our focus when we most need open minds?\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– Sherry Turkle, Professor, MIT; author of \u003ci\u003eReclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAlone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Howard Gardner has done what scholars dream of doing but rarely accomplish: he had a powerfully original idea which he developed in a way that changed an entire field, reaching well beyond the academy and affecting our nation’s social policy and collective understanding. \u003ci\u003eA Synthesizing Mind\u003c\/i\u003e is an illuminating account of how such a breakthrough came about, a thick description of the life trajectory and the intellectual formation that led to this enduring achievement.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e– Stephen Greenblatt, author of \u003ci\u003eTyrant: Shakespeare on Politics\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eHoward Gardner is John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Best known as the originator of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, he is the author of thirty books, including \u003ci\u003eFrames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eTruth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eThe App Generation\u003c\/i\u003e (with Katie Davis).We can’t do the experiment, but I am convinced that I would not be writing this memoir, and would not have achieved a certain degree of notoriety if I had chosen some other noun: seven capacities; or seven competences; or seven kinds of minds, recalling the book that I had outlined some years earlier; or seven talents or seven gifts, or even, to use a phrase I detest, seven learning styles. No, with little doubt, it was by virtue of the decision to beg, borrow, seize, or steal the word intelligence that I caught the attention of so many readers, including the then all powerful members of the so-called chattering classes. \u003cbr\u003e Ever since Alfred Binet (1857–1911), a great French psychologist, the use of the word “intelligence” and the instrument called the “intelligence quotient test” or the “IQ test” has taken on a special, even sacred meaning in much of the Western world. We want to be intelligent ourselves; we want to know and befriend people who are intelligent; and above all, we want our children to be intelligent. \u003cbr\u003e How best to convey that capacity to the world? Take a short-answer, multiple-choice style test, tote up the right and wrong answers, and compare your performance with that of peers. If you do about as well as others in your cohort, you’ll be called average. If you do better, say by a standard deviation, you’ll be called smart; and if you don’t do as well as your peers, you’ll be called dull, dumb, or, to be more politically correct, a bit on the slow side or “very nice.” And if you are two or three standard deviations away from the mean of the group, you’ll be hailed as a “genius” at one end of the bell curve or dismissed as an “imbecile” or an “idiot” at the other, less happy end of the curve. The devising and administration of the intelligence tests turns out to be a notable achievement of psychological measurement, but also a perilous one.\u003cbr\u003e As a scholar, having settled on a noun, I also needed a definition of what constituted an intelligence. Over the years, I have tinkered with the exact wording of that definition. But in \u003ci\u003eFrames of Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, first published in 1983, I put forth my thinking in informal terms: “A human intellectual competence must entail a set of skills of problem solving—enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters, and, when appropriate, to create an effective product—and must entail the potential for finding or creating problems—hereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge” (62). \u003cbr\u003e Looking back nearly four decades, I am relieved that I was appropriately modest in my claims for the definition and the criteria of an intelligence: “Ultimately it would certainly be desirable to have an algorithm for the selection of an intelligence . . . at present, however, it must be admitted that the selection (or rejection) of a candidate intelligence is reminiscent more of an artistic judgment than of a scientific assessment . . . where my procedure does take a scientific turn is in the making public of the grounds for the judgment, so that other investigators can review the evidence and draw their own conclusions” (\u003ci\u003eFrames of Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, 63).\u003cbr\u003e I had thrown down the gauntlet: Goodbye, or even good riddance, to a single intelligence as probed by the ubiquitous IQ test; greetings to multiple intelligences, modes of assessment yet to be determined. I would soon see how the world would react to the words and claims in the new and perhaps daring synthesis that I was putting forth.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299902476517,"sku":"NP9780262044264","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262044264.jpg?v=1767720834","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-synthesizing-mind-isbn-9780262044264","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}