Naturalistic intelligence: what is it and what is it for?

The Theory of multiple intelligences released by Howard Gardner It has been, since it was disseminated in the 1980s, one of the research and intervention proposals in psychology that have generated the most interest at street level.

At first the types of intelligence proposed by Gardner were 7, but twelve years after the publication of the work that would make them known, the author presented another element for this list. It was about naturalistic intelligence, also known as the eighth type of intelligence..

What is naturalistic intelligence?

Naturalistic intelligence is the ability to categorize elements of the environment recognizing their differences and the way in which they relate to each other, and to use this information to interact with them in a beneficial way.

The paradigm of this type of intelligence are naturalists and explorers such as Charles Darwin or Alexander von Humboldt, able to enter natural environments, identify the different animal and plant species, learn the defining characteristics of each and use this information on your own benefit.

Confusions around naturalistic intelligence

Naturalistic intelligence is confused precisely because of the reference to the natural world that is made in its conceptualization.

While in the definitions of the rest of the intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner it is put much emphasis on its capacity for mental processes, the idea of ​​intelligence naturalist seems to give a lot of importance to the type of information with which it works, and not only to what is done with that information. The formality of this intelligence as a process is explained, but it also talks about the specific contents it deals with: those elements of the nature that we have to identify and take advantage of for our benefit, the anatomical peculiarities of each of the plants and animals that we examine, etc.

In other words, while we know that the logical-mathematical intelligence will be activated whenever we pose a logical and mathematical challenge and that the spatial intelligence will have a role as long as we conceive something that can be imagined in a two-dimensional or 3D plane, it seems that naturalistic intelligence only You will work with a very specific type of content: those that would be linked to the natural environment or to all forms of life that come from they.

Immersion in the natural vs. artificial

Curiously, understanding that naturalistic intelligence applies only to this type of content does not make its conceptualization clearer and more delimited, but just the opposite happens.

In fact, sustaining this notion of what naturalistic intelligence is makes it necessary to relate the debate of whether the theory of multiple intelligences is more or less scientifically valid with Another discussion that has practically nothing to do with it: the philosophical dispute about what is natural and what is unnatural, and in what sense these two worlds are ontologically different between Yes. For example, are different types of vegetables something natural, since they have been profoundly altered over centuries and millennia of artificial selection? Or even... Are what we now know as animal species something natural, when many of these categories have been established to starting from the genetic (and therefore, "artificial") analysis of its members and not so much from a direct observation of their anatomy?

This immersion in metaphysical waters makes it not too complicated to relate intelligence naturalist with personal enjoyment of environments little altered by human beings or with mystical ideas as the ability to empathize with life on the planet, the sensitivity when it comes to feeling one with nature, etc.

The role of the natural in the eighth intelligence

However, and contrary to what is often believed, naturalistic intelligence does not refer only to flora, fauna and what we find in pristine environments. Part of this confusion could come from the fact that Gardner initially explained very vaguely what this new type of intelligence, dedicating just a few lines to it, and in them he did not speak so much about naturalistic intelligence as about "the intelligence of naturalists ".

Mentions of the natural environment served to create a powerful image that served to exemplify in a few lines what this new concept consisted of. So while Gardner spoke about the ability to get to know the natural environment well, he also He clarified that as he understood it, it was also involved in the recognition and classification of all kinds of objects and artifacts.: cars, sneakers ...

That is why naturalistic intelligence would be defined, more than by being a reflection of our ability to learn from natural environments, by being a reflection of our ability to learn about all kinds of environments and to interact appropriately with the elements that are available in them.

Validity of naturalistic intelligence and criticism

By making the concept of the natural go to the background, naturalistic intelligence is left out of the complications and turbulence of the ontological nature-artificiality dilemmas but there is another problem that does not escape: it seems to overlap with the rest of types of intelligence. Or at least with the linguistic intelligence (to conceptualize the identified elements), the logical-mathematical (to understand the hierarchies and categorizations) and spatial intelligence (to apply this knowledge in a specific environment and in real time).

The problem of the overlap between the types of intelligences proposed by Gardner does not come again and of course it does not concern only naturalistic intelligence, but the core idea of ​​the theory of multiple intelligences, according to which these are mental capacities more isolated from each other than united forming a whole. So far, due to the lack of empirical evidence in favor of multiple intelligences and the good health with which account of the notion of a unified intelligence, the addition of this octave does not serve, for the moment, to reinforce the ideas of Howard Gardner.

Bibliographic references:

• Gardner, Howard (1998). "A Reply to Perry D. Klein's 'Multiplying the problems of intelligence by eight' ". Canadian Journal of Education 23 (1):

• Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; and García-Allen, Jonathan (2018). "What is intelligence? From IQ to multiple intelligences ". EMSE Publishing.