Howard Gardner

This book was not an easy read, in fact, early on I was wondering whether to finish it. I'm glad that I persisted and finished it because, although the author tries hard not to force his opinions on us, it does turn out that he has an opinion. He just wants us to keep going beyond his ideas and find our own applications. He is also very clear that intelligence and morality should not be confounded. Intelligence can be used for moral or immoral purposes. The intelligence is indifferent to how show more it is applied. That alone makes the book worth reading. There are a few things from the book that are worth mentioning.

"But wisdom is not a predictable feature of aging; many old people do not show particular range in reaching their judgements, and certainly some young people are wise beyond their years. The historian George Kennan and the philosopher Isaiah Berlin did not suddenly become wise when they entered their eighth or ninth decade, and fortunately for them and us, their skill at synthesizing did not decline noticeably with age." (Page 133)

"A crucial point about wisdom is its modesty, its humility. Neither intelligence nor creativity nor leadership reserveds a place for silence, for quite, for resignation. ... The wise person knows when to say nothing, and when to step down and make room for someone else. The wise adult knows about the fraility of humanity and the difficulty of bringing about enduring changes." (Page 134)

"When someone hears or observes the responses of others, particularly those at a higher stage, their own thinking may become more complex and rich." (Page 189) This reminded me of Flow which emphasizes the importance of increasing levels of complexity for happiness.

And why is the author so modest about forcing his views on us: "Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about the personal intelligences." (Page 201) Ultimately, we all have a lot to learn, and this book emphasizes that the quick application of Multiple Intelligence theory is liable to be a misapplication. Gardner advocates avoiding simplistic application of what we only vaguely understand, and striving for a deeper understanding. show less

Summary: Studies how leaders effectively communicate with the minds of those they lead using case studies of eleven direct and indirect leaders.

Howard E. Gardner is a cognitive psychologist who works in the field of education. One of his most significant works is The Unschooled Mind, the thesis of which is that outside of domains where an adult has great expertise, most adults theorize about the world with the mind of a five year old. In this work, Gardner focuses on effective leadership as show more an exercise of communication with the minds of others, seeking to influence them to action that follows one's leadership. For Gardner, storytelling is central, and effective leaders are not only able to tell a story that communicates with those who share their expertise, but also with a wider public responding with the "unschooled mind" of a five year old. He identifies two types of leaders, indirect leaders, like Albert Einstein, and direct leaders, like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some individuals exercise both kinds of leadership.

Gardner considers eleven individuals who exercised leadership in a variety of domains:

Margaret Mead: Anthropology
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Physics
Robert Maynard Hutchins: Higher education
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., Business (General Motors)
George Marshall, Military and Statecraft
Pope John XXIII: Religion
Eleanor Roosevelt: American women
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil rights
Margaret Thatcher: Political
Jean Monnet: International leadership
Mahatma Gandhi: International leadership

After introductory chapters outlining his basic approach and methodology, Gardner devotes a chapter to each of these leaders, except for the last two, who he considers together. What is fascinating is that he looks at the development of these leaders, the story they told and how they adapted their stories when their leadership moved beyond those who shared their expertise, and how effective they were. He looks at indirect leaders like Jean Monnet, who essentially served other national leaders in forming the framework of the European Union, and direct leaders like Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. who communicated a compelling, missional story for General Motors. He also considers their areas of failure. For a leader like Robert Maynard Hutchins, his inability to embody his story with the faculty at the University of Chicago, and include a wide constituency in his vision were critical failures.

From these profiles, Gardner identified six constants of leadership:

1. The Story: Leaders must have a central story or message that includes those necessary for accomplishing her vision. Often these are inclusive, but not always, as in political or military conflict.
2. The Audience: A story cannot succeed without being heard and heeded, and the effective leader is able to communicate in a nuanced fashion that different audiences will understand.
3. The Organization: The influence of a leader's story depends on an organization for implementation--be it a business, a political party, a movement. Margaret Mead never created an organization and had no school of followers after she died.
4. The Embodiment: Leaders, especially direct leaders, must embody their story. George Marshall not only spoke about a vision for service but embodied it in his integrity, hard work, and willingness to work behind the scenes for the success of the war effort.
5. Direct and Indirect Leadership. Indirect leaders influence through symbolic products whereas direct leaders engage with their followers as they articulate a story.
6. The Issue of Expertise. Those who move from leadership within a domain to wider leadership, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, do so because of proven expertise. The paradox is that the wider one's leadership, the less their technical expertise alone is a factor.

Two appendices in the form of extended tables chart Gardner's analysis, the first consider the eleven leaders in this study, the second ten world leaders during the World War II era.

I did have one reservation about this study. It seemed to me that Gardner's approach presupposed his conclusions. This does not necessarily invalidate his conclusions, given that this work extends prior research. But I would be cautious in considering this as an all-encompassing account of leadership. For me, it suggested the importance of having, and effectively communicating to different audiences, one's story of a preferred future.

Gardner's eleven leaders, although they each have their failings, are generally positive figures. His account of story and the unschooled mind also recognizes that some leaders are able to communicate compelling stories and gather a following with very bad consequences, as in the case of Hitler or Mussolini. There are also instructive lessons for those who are so "wonky" about their stories, that they are unable to garner a following outside those who are already sufficiently wonky. There is also a quite wonderful lesson in the stories of those like Pope John XXIII, George Marshall, and Eleanor Roosevelt who embodied the stories they conveyed, and so were able to lead all the more effectively.

Most of us both lead and follow in our lives. Gardner's book shows important qualities of story, inclusion, embodiment and expertise as critical in leading well. He also helps us when we follow, to listen to the stories leaders tell and the congruence between story and the life of the leader. It seems to me vital to consider whether the story is one that works for all who a potential leader would lead, or whether those stories will intensify the divides between those included and those excluded. show less

Although now (in its 1987 edition) a quarter of a century old, this book remains valuable not so much for its argument in favour of the development of the then relatively new discipline of cognitive science as for its insights into how science actually works.

Regardless of that, the book remains a useful history of six loosely related disciplines - the humanistic social 'science' of anthropology and the hard science of neuroscience at the edges of the proposed (in 1984) new science and its show more core cognitive disciplines of philosophy, psychology, linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Gardner's argument is that these disciplines are the basis for a science of cognition covering such problems as how we perceive the world (contributing to epistemology), how we imagine the world, how we categorise and classify the world and not only how we reason but if we can be said to be rational at all.

These are questions that do not replace philosophy - certainly not the ontological basis for existentialism or any viable philosophy of meaning - but they usefully limit the claims of philosophy to what cannot be known by evidence-based scientific method (so that philosophy still includes core questions not only of meaning but of value).

Gardner takes his story no further than 1987 (in the paperback edition). Much has happened since yet this is still an excellent guide to the relevant sciences up to the mid-1980s.

However, the general reader should be warned that he writes clearly but that he is telling a complex story for the benefit of his peers. You should expect to be stretched and perhaps to find it a difficult book if rewarding one.

Gardner's judgments strike me as generally sound and especially useful when helping us to understand why the mid-twentieth century behaviourist model crumbled so quickly and how the more simple models applying computing analogies to the human condition were already becoming unsustainable as he was writing his book.

The dialectic between computing and brain studies has been fruitful but a basic awareness of continental philosophy would have cast doubt on any project that would make simple analogies betwen evolved brain and the technology of calculation and analysis.

'Being human' is a highly complex business that owes a great deal to our inheritance as an evolved biological entity with predispositions for survival in a hostile world.

The 'social' or cultural is simply an extension of the peculiarities of our condition so that research that shows that our rationality is suspect should not be confused with any value judgment that our lack of rationality is necessarily a bad thing.

The serious follower of the relevant sciences may find this book merely a reference point for a subsequent 25 years of discovery and theory but the book remains valuable and cautionary, regardless, as a description of how scientific paradigms (in the Kuhnian sense) rise and fall.

Gardner is assiduous in arguing for his thesis but not being polemical. There is no case (it would seem) where he is not prepared not merely to put an argument but to put all the criticisms of the argument. He is wholly fair-minded and generous - and scientific.

The result is that we get a strong picture both of progress in science and theory (not the same thing) but also of the very contingent nature of all theory and even of much experimentation at any particular moment in time.

This is important because a belief in science and scepticism about claims made by scientists are not incompatible. This book helps us to understand why - it is something to be borne in mind when evaluating claims about any application of science as technology or public policy.

What might be true now (as behaviourism once affected public policy in the 1950s) might not be true tomorrow. Caution is the appropriate response to all applications of science that are directed ultimately at society or the individual - whether they be claims about 'nudge', climate change, 'peak oil', GMOs or whatever.

What science can do is tell us what is true to all intents and purposes when dealing with matter (rather than with consciousness working on and in relation to matter as in the social) and what is negatively proven to be not possible or to be unlikely.

However, in dealing with mind and societies, let alone meaning and values, its paradigms are going to be unreliable when it comes to telling us much about what we are or should do when our complexity and reflexiveness is taken into account.

The cognitive science project is an important project to pursue but will be dangerous if it moves from the descriptive to the normative or the prescriptive.

While there is no sense that Gardner wishes to pursue anything but responsible science, one cannot be so sure of policymakers or vested interests that stand between us and the top end of the scientific community.

We certainly cannot be sure of those in the twenty-first century who want to get in on the band wagon of state funding of cognitive science for purposes that are political - the manipulation of the population into a state of order or compliance.

And even amongst scientists, there are those who are deluded into value and meaning from self interest, creating problems, diseases and conditions for which cognitive manipulations are assumed to be the solution.

In other words, while we may fear that cognitive science may assist in creating some monster of the Singularity, a cognitively advanced AI, we would do better to be frightened of the use of cognitive science in the hands of authority to force us into compliance with its values rather than our own.

Fortunately, no matter how much funding is thrown at the new neuroscience or at the militarisation of anthropology or at the core investigations of cognition, there is reason to be optimistic.

Human resistance and creativity, the nature of man in time, his desires and wilfulness and the sheer complexity of the social, more complex than the weather which can never be predicted beyond a short period, guarantee the utter failure of such projects in the long run.

With luck the new investment in these sets of 'sciences' (actually rational evidence-based investigations that fall between the hard science of matter and the non-science of the so-called social sciences) will find some cures for genuine suffering.

They may also provide people with improved choices in life and give us insights into the destructive modelling of such idiocies as religion and ideology. We should not be luddite - just cautious.

As with so much in the twenty-first century, the intellectual class sits between the people and states made up of coalitions of special interests.

The quasi-hard sciences, while expressing a 'truth' of sorts, are tools and weapons that might be made available to either side in what amounts to a large-scale but covert social war. show less

I can't imagine a better single explanation about what education should be. He hints at just enough of his own worldview to tell me we wouldn't agree on everything. But in a way, that is the point, because Gardner adeptly conveys that an educated mind is one that can intelligently assess ideas at a level beyond initial impressions and patterns. The antithesis of his ideal is the "cultural literacy," which Gardner equates as a "barn full" of facts absent the cognitive powers to abstract show more meaning and project into other problems. He uses three scenarios (evolution, The Marriage of Figaro, and the Holocaust) as subject matter for demonstrating his point that education must achieve depth before breadth. He also advocates truth, beauty, and good as the primary themes for education. show less