The nature of intelligence / Louis Leon Thurstone.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thurstone, Louis Leon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intellect.

Psychology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 167 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

New York : Harcourt Brace & Company, 1924.

Summary:

A psychological subject that is at the present time very much in the public mind is that of Intelligence Tests. Most of the psychological tests that are in common use have been arrived at principally by trying different tests for different purposes until certain tests have been found to be successful. There is considerable difference of opinion as to what intelligence really is, but, even if we do not know just what intelligence is, we can still use the tests as long as they are demonstrably satisfactory for definite practical ends. We use electricity for practical purposes even though we have been uncertain as to its ultimate nature, and it is so with the intelligence tests. We use the tests and leave it for separate inquiry to determine the ultimate nature of intelligence. In these chapters I have started with the assumption that conduct originates in the actor himself, and I have tried to discover what intelligent conduct may mean if we follow this assumption to its limits. I find that the disparity between the new psychology, and the academic or scientific psychology and the most rigorously objective behaviourism breaks down completely. These three schools of psychological interpretation form a continuum, in that conduct originates in the self as studied by psychiatry, it takes partial and tentative formulations in conscious states as studied by academic psychology, and it completes itself into behaviour, as studied by the behaviourist school. The cognitive categories of academic psychology become, in such an interpretation, the incomplete and tentative formulations of conduct. Consciousness is interpreted as conduct which is in the process of being formed. It may be that these chapters contain nothing that is fundamentally new beyond the attempt to harmonize three schools of thought about human nature which have the appearance of being irreconcilably disparate. Stated in a nutshell, my message is that psychology starts with the unrest of the inner self, and it completes its discovery in the contentment of the inner self.

Notes:

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