The Search for Intelligence: What is Intelligence?
No one agrees on what intelligence is. An early 1900s symposium proposed two main characteristics: the ability to adapt to the environment and the ability to learn from experience. Charles Spearman in 1904 introduced the idea that intelligence is a ...
Leader for a Nation: Essence of Leadership, The
David Gergen, Harvard professor and CNN political analyst, talks about presidential leadership. Although it is likely that Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had higher IQs, Ronald Reagan, he says, was a more effective leader because he was better cente...
Goddard, Race and Intelligence (Part One)
Professor of American studies and history Matthew Frye Jacobson talks about Henry Herbert Goddard, who believed that race was the key to discovering what people's potential was in the realm of intelligence. Goddard's work was used by nativists in Co...
Goddard, Race and Intelligence (Part Two)
Professor of American studies and history Matthew Frye Jacobson explains that, while Henry Herbert Goddard and others like him are often viewed currently as, "...crackpots...out on the fringe somewhere with bizarre ideas that aren't really related t...
Franz Boas Takes On The Eugenicists
Professor of American studies and history Matthew Frye Jacobson talks about Jewish scholar and Columbia anthropology professor Franz Boas. Professor Jacobson explains that Boas was, "...one of the first scholars who really started to question what w...
Artificial Intelligence: The Common Sense Problem
Professor of Philosophy Hubert Dreyfus talks about recognizing early on that computers using only symbols and rules can't match what a human brain can do, because the machines lack what we call common sense.
The Social Role in the Self
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about the self, noting that there's more to it than just intelligence. There is also a social component which Professor Dennett believes is just as critical as the intelligence component in enabling people to functio...
1924 Immigration Act, The (Part One)
Professor of American studies and history Matthew Frye Jacobson talks about the inspiration Hitler and other prominent Nazis took from American science and the 1924 Immigration Act. "Hitler saw that law as a real inspiration for the way the state co...