In this Askwith Forum, HGSE Professor Howard Gardner reflects on the 25 years since he proposed his new theory and definition of intelligence in his 1983 book entitled "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences".
Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts
3.21.2010
Multiple Intelligences - Howard Gardner
1.25.2010
What a maze-solving oil drop tells us of intelligence
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527443.900-what-a-mazesolving-oil-drop-tells-us-of-intelligence.html?full=true
DYED pink and doped with acid, the small, inanimate drop of oil is deposited at the entrance to the maze - and immediately sets off towards the exit. A few minutes later, it emerges at the other end.
No one would equate this apparently astonishing problem-solving with intelligence. But new theories on human intelligence and the brain suggest the simple molecular processes governing the oil droplet's apparently smart behaviour may be fundamentally similar to those that govern how we act.
No one would equate this apparently astonishing problem-solving with intelligence. But new theories on human intelligence and the brain suggest the simple molecular processes governing the oil droplet's apparently smart behaviour may be fundamentally similar to those that govern how we act.
A decade ago Toshiyuki Nakagaki, now at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, reported that the slime mould Physarum polycephalum could negotiate a maze to reach food at the exit. Boldly, his team wrote in Nature: "this implies that cellular materials can show a primitive intelligence".
Now Bartosz Grzybowski, a chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has shown that a simple oil droplet floating on top of an aqueous solution can also navigate a complex maze - in this case to reach an acid-soaked lump of gel at the exit.
[...]
So why does the dumb droplet appear to be moving in an intelligent way? The answer is all around us, says Clark. The aqueous environment surrounding the droplet is structured to such a high degree by the pH gradient that it makes the dumb droplet appear smart. "It's a neat demonstration of just how much problem-solving punch you can get from a minimal internal structure in a nicely enabling environment."
Humans rely on the same trick, says Clark. It forms the basis of the extended mind theory, which Clark and David Chalmers, now at the Australian National University in Canberra, proposed in the late 1990s. They say the division between mind and environment is less rigid than previously thought; the mind uses information within the environment as an extension of itself.
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Now Bartosz Grzybowski, a chemist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has shown that a simple oil droplet floating on top of an aqueous solution can also navigate a complex maze - in this case to reach an acid-soaked lump of gel at the exit.
[...]
So why does the dumb droplet appear to be moving in an intelligent way? The answer is all around us, says Clark. The aqueous environment surrounding the droplet is structured to such a high degree by the pH gradient that it makes the dumb droplet appear smart. "It's a neat demonstration of just how much problem-solving punch you can get from a minimal internal structure in a nicely enabling environment."
Humans rely on the same trick, says Clark. It forms the basis of the extended mind theory, which Clark and David Chalmers, now at the Australian National University in Canberra, proposed in the late 1990s. They say the division between mind and environment is less rigid than previously thought; the mind uses information within the environment as an extension of itself.
3.30.2009
New Artificial DNA Points to Alien Life
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090214-weird-life.html
By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor
CHICAGO — A strange, new genetic code a lot like that found in all terrestrial life is sitting in a beaker full of oily water in a laboratory in Florida, a scientist said today, calling it the first example of an artificial chemical system that is capable of Darwinian evolution.
The system is made of the four molecules that are the basic building blocks of our DNA along with eight synthetic modifications of them, said biochemist Steven A. Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville.
The main difference between the synthetic molecules and those that make up conventional DNA is that Benner's molecules cannot make copies of themselves, although that is just "a couple of years" away, he said.
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