Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- Spearman’s g
- Thurstone’s PMA
- Cattell’s Gf/Gc
- Frames of Mind
- Project Spectrum
- Naturalist intelligence
- Sternberg’s successful intelligence
- Waterhouse critique
- Visser, Ashton, Vernon
- Classroom afterlife
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
LessMore
Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Does this atlas rank groups by IQ, race or nation?
No. Pathways and evidence stay individual. Scores are browsing aids — never group biological or racial ranks.
Did Gardner refute g?
He argued g was too narrow for a human-worth story. He did not make the intercorrelations among tests disappear. Spearman’s positive manifold remains a psychometric fact.
What did Waterhouse 2006 argue?
That MI lacks the cognitive-neuroscience and psychometric support a new theory of intelligence would need, and that schools adopted it ahead of the evidence.
What did Visser, Ashton and Vernon 2006 find?
Tasks written to tap Gardner’s intelligences still loaded on general and broad factors rather than eight independent IQs.
Is MI the same as learning styles?
Gardner has rejected the popular “teach to visual/auditory styles” version. MI is about domains of competence, not preferred input channels — though schools often mash the two.
Why do teachers still like it?
It licenses music, movement and social work as serious. That institutional use can be good even if the psychometrics are thin.
Gardner’s Project Zero background in arts and the Harvard Graduate School of Education produced Frames of Mind as a challenge to a single-test picture of mind. The book travelled into schools faster than into intelligence journals.
The timeline below follows dated arguments and institutions, not a national myth of genius and not a group ranking.
Origin
1983 · Harvard / United States — Gardner’s Project Zero background in arts and the Harvard Graduate School of Education produced Frames of Mind as a challenge to a single-test picture of mind. The book travelled into schools faster than into intelligence journals.
Timeline
- Spearman’s g
The psychometric baseline MI later tried to decentre — tests intercorrelate.
- Thurstone’s PMA
Primary Mental Abilities already offered a multi-factor picture inside psychometrics.
- Cattell’s Gf/Gc
Fluid and crystallised intelligence: another official pluralism that still keeps a hierarchy.
- Frames of Mind
Gardner publishes the first full MI list for a wide audience.
- Project Spectrum
Early-childhood attempts to assess several intelligences in classroom activities.
- Naturalist intelligence
Gardner adds an eighth in later writing.
- Sternberg’s successful intelligence
A rival multi-part model with a more psychometric research style.
- Waterhouse critique
Educational Psychologist: MI has not met the evidence bar for a new intelligence theory.
- Visser, Ashton, Vernon
Intelligence: MI tasks still show general and broad-factor structure.
- Classroom afterlife
MI posters outlive the journal fight; learning-styles mashups persist.
Eras
- Factor pluralism — Thurstone to Cattell — Psychometrics already had more than one number before 1983.
- Arts-and-education proposal — Gardner 1983 — A philosopher-psychologist’s list aimed at schools and Project Zero.
- School adoption — 1980s–2000s — Lesson plans and posters; weak new tests.
- Psychometric rebuttal — 2006 — Waterhouse and Visser put the missing measurements on record.
- Mashup era — 2010s– — MI, learning styles and “brain gym” get confused in staff rooms.
Shifts
- From g-critique to poster set 1983–2000 — A theoretical argument became eight icons on a wall.
- From new IQs to taxonomy 2006– — Honest use: a list of valued domains, not eight thermometers.
- From MI to styles confusion 1990s– — Teachers often heard “learning styles”, which Gardner rejected.
Multiple intelligences: keep the dates visible. Names of talents are younger than the work they try to capture.
OriginsScienceSignsDevelopPracticeExemplarsMyths In this language region