The nature of "intelligence" and the principles of cognition / by C. Spearman.

  • Spearman, C. (Charles), 1863-1945.
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nature of "intelligence" and the principles of cognition / by C. Spearman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/376 (page 9)
    however, they decide that what it means is something which should be measured by way of its fundamental organ, judgment. But hereby they would appear to commit, once more, the same old fallacy of taking their formal power to possess a unitary nature. For their whole plan implies that success in judging the kind of subject-matter supplied by the tests will always be proportional to that in judging any other kind. To our surprise, moreover, after thus suggesting that for the tests to go beyond this “ judgment ” would only be “ a great loss of time,” they disclose to us a few pages later that more than half of the tests actually employed by them diverge intentionally into the very powers just rejected, that is to say, sensory and memorial. For now they write : “ The tests to which we shall have recourse seem capable of distribution into three distinct categories : (1) Tests of memory ; (2) Tests of intelligence which are partly done with the help of language; (3) Tests of sensorial intelligence.”1 And the surprise may excusably deepen into very great astonishment on finding that, instead of each of their “ three distinct categories ” ever being considered separately, all are at once thrown quite promiscuously into one single pool. Such a procedure would appear to be altogether irreconcilable with their theoretical exposition, or with any theory whatever of unitary formal powers. Instead, it is just what was demanded by the opposite theory which has been pro- mulgated the year before. Four years later Binet defines this intelligence in a completely different manner. He now writes : “ Comprehension, invention, direction, and censor- ship ; intelligence lies in these four words. Conse- quently, we can conclude already from what precedes 1 Ibidem, p. 257.