PATTERN RECOGNITION INTELLIGENCE

A few weeks ago, I wrote up a short commentary about the Ninth Intelligence in Howard Gardner’s catalog of Multiple Intelligences. On that occasion, I had identified about a dozen alternate names for (applications of) the Ninth Intelligence in Gardner’s catalog.

I wondered what other names this ninth and most arcane kind of visionary thinking went by. In coming up with my own list of synonyms for the Ninth Intelligence, I left out the one that Temple Grandin prefers: Pattern Thinking.

Back when I was a grad student at Stanford University studying Systems Theory, one of my favorite professors, Tom Cover, was specializing in Pattern Recognition, an arcane branch of Information Theory involving statistical analysis of patterns in large data sets. Pattern Recognition is closely related to Pattern Discovery and Pattern Creation.

When I first learned about Gardner’s model of Multiple Intelligences, I wondered why he left out Pattern Recognition Intelligence. And then I decided that the methods of information processing I had learned in Tom Cover’s courses on Pattern Recognition were too arcane, too mathematical, too technical to belong in Gardner’s list of generic categories of thinking and information processing.

But eventually Gardner did add a ninth category to his original list, proposing to call it Existential Intelligence. Other suggested names included Theological Intelligence, Spiritual Intelligence, and Systems Intelligence. One of the newest names for (or applications of) the Ninth Intelligence is Sustainability Thinking and Sustainability Planning.

In reading Wired’s excerpt from Temple Grandin’s new book, I realized that Pattern Thinking was indeed yet another synonym for Existential Intelligence (especially in the context of Systems Thinking).

You may be aware that Simon Baron-Cohen prefers to call individuals on the Autism/Aspergers Spectrum “Systematizers” because they tend to favor topics of study like Cybernetics, Operations Research, and other branches of Systems Science and Systems Theory. Peter Senge calls Systems Thinking “The Fifth Discipline.”

So yes, the Ninth Intelligence does encompass Pattern Thinking, but it’s not a particularly new kind of thinking. It used to be called Intuition, Visionary Insight, Wisdom, or Enlightenment. Aristotle called it Metaphysics — the next (otherwise unnamed) subject of study that came after the chapter on Physics.

So here we have Existential Intelligence — Systems Thinking, Pattern Thinking, Metaphysics, Spiritual Intelligence, Theological or Religious Thinking, Prophetic Insight, Big Picture Thinking, Sustainability Planning etc.

And of all these doorways and paths into Systems Thinking or Existential Thinking, I believe Temple Grandin’s suggestion of Pattern Thinking might be the most easily traveled pathway into the Ninth Intelligence.