Robert Cooper, author of The Other 90%, says that we shouldn’t think of intelligence as happening only in the brain in our skulls. He talks of the “heart” brain and the “gut” brain. Whenever we have a direct experience, he says, it does not go directly to the brain in our heads. The first place it goes is to the neurological networks of the intestinal tract and heart. He describes the first of these, the enteric nervous system, as a “second brain” inside the intestines, which is “independent of but also interconnected with the brain in the cranium.” He says that this is why we often experience our first reaction to events as a “gut reaction.” Whether or not we acknowledge them, he says, our gut reactions shape everything we do.
Other psychologists and intelligence testers worry about all of these sorts of ideas. They say there is no quantifiable evidence to prove their existence. That may be. But the clear fact of everyday experience is that human intelligence is diverse and multifaceted. For evidence, we need only look at the extraordinary richness and complexity of human culture and achievement. Whether we can ever capture all of this in a single theory of intelligence—with three, four, five, or even eight separate categories—is a problem for the theorists.
Meanwhile the evidence of a basic truth of human ability is everywhere: we “think” about our experiences in all the ways we have them. It’s clear too that we all have different strengths and natural aptitudes.
I mentioned that I don’t have a particular aptitude for mathematics. Actually, I don’t have any aptitude for it. Alexis Lemaire, on the other hand, does. Lemaire is a young French doctoral student specializing in artificial intelligence. In 2007, he claimed the world record for calculating in his head the thirteenth root of a random two‐hundred‐digit number. He did this in 72.4 seconds. In case, like me, you’re not sure what this means, let me explain. Alexis sat in front of a laptop computer that had generated at random a two‐hundred‐figure number and displayed it on the screen. The number was more than seventeen lines long. This is a big number.
Alexis’s task was to calculate in his head the thirteenth root of that number (that is, the number that multiplied by itself thirteen times would produce the exact two‐hundred‐digit number on the screen). He stared at the screen without speaking and then announced correctly that the answer was, 2,397,207,667,966,701. Remember that he did this in 72.4 seconds. In his head.
Lemaire performed this feat at the New York Hall of Science. He has been working on the thirteenth‐root challenge for a number of years. Previously, his best time had been a sluggish 77 seconds. Afterward, he told the press, “The first digit is very easy, the last digit is very easy, but the inside numbers are extremely difficult. I use an artificial intelligence system on my own brain instead of on a computer. I believe most people can do it, but I also have a high‐speed mind. My brain works sometimes very, very fast.… I use a process to improve my skills to behave like a computer. It’s like running a program in my head to control my brain.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “when I do multiplication my brain works so fast that I need to take medication. I think somebody without a very fast brain can also do this kind of multiplication but this may be easier for me because my brain is faster.” He practices math regularly. So that he can think faster, he exercises, doesn’t drink caffeine or alcohol, and avoids foods that are high in sugar or fat. His experience of math is so intense that he also has to take regular time off to rest his brain. Otherwise, he thinks there is a danger that too much math could be bad for his health and his heart.
I have always felt that too much math can be bad for my health and my heart as well, but for different reasons. Surprisingly, like me, he did not do particularly well in math at school, though the comparisons between us end right there. He was not top of the class in math, and mainly taught himself through books.
He did have a natural flair for numbers, though, which he discovered when he was about eleven years old and which he has refined and cultivated through constantly challenging himself and by developing sophisticated techniques to exploit it. But the foundation of all of these achievements is a unique, personal aptitude combined with a deep passion and commitment. When he is digging around in huge numbers to unearth their roots, Alexis Lemaire is clearly in his Element.
The Three Features of Human Intelligence
Human intelligence seems to have at least three main features. The first is that it is extraordinarily diverse. It is clearly not limited to the ability to do verbal and mathematical reasoning. These skills are important, but they are simply one way in which intelligence expresses itself.
Gordon Parks was a legendary photographer who captured the black American experience in a way that few others ever had. He was the first black producer and director of a major Hollywood film. He helped found Essence magazine and served as its editorial director for three years. He was a gifted poet, novelist, and memoirist. He was a talented composer who created his own form of musical notation to write his works.
And he was professionally trained at none of this.
In fact, Gordon Parks barely attended high school. Parks’s mother died when he was fifteen, and soon after, he found himself on the streets, unable to graduate. The schooling he did get was discouraging—he often mentioned that one of his teachers told her students that college would be a waste for them since they were destined to become porters and house cleaners.
Still, he used his intelligence in ways few could match. He taught himself to play the piano and this helped him make some money to get by in his late teens. A few years later, he bought a camera from a pawnshop and taught himself to take pictures. What he learned about film and writing came largely from observation, an intense level of intellectual curiosity, and an off‐the‐charts ability to feel for and see into the lives of other people.
“I just kept on and on,” he said in an interview at the Smithsonian Institute, “and I had an indomitable courage as far as getting started in photography was concerned. I realized I liked it and I went all out for it. My wife at this time was sort of against it and my mother‐in‐law, as all mothers‐in‐law are, was against it. I spent this dough and decided to get myself some cameras. That’s just about what happened. I had a tremendous interest and I just kept plugging away and knocking at doors, seeking out encouragement where I could get it.”
“My life to me is like sort of a disjointed dream,” he said in a PBS interview. “Things have happened to me—incredible. It’s so disjointed. But all I know, it was a constant effort, a constant feeling that I must not fail.”
Parks’s contribution to American culture is considerable: his searing photography, most notably American Gothic, which juxtaposed a black woman holding a mop and broom against the American flag; his inspired film work, including the breakout hit Shaft, which introduced Hollywood to the black action hero; his unconventional prose work; and his unique musical work.
I don’t know if Gordon Parks ever took a standardized academic test or a college entrance exam. Given his lack of traditional education, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have scored particularly high on one if he had. Interestingly, while he never completed high school, he amassed forty honorary doctorates— dedicating one of them to the teacher who had been so dismissive when he was in high school. Yet by any reasonable definition of the word, Gordon Parks was remarkably intelligent, a rare human being with an uncanny ability to learn and master complex and nuanced art forms.