The author demonstrates that there exist many human "intelligences", common to all cultures - each with its own patterns of development and brain activity, and each different in kind from the others.

The author demonstrates that there exist many human "intelligences", common to all cultures - each with its own pattern of development and brain activity, and each different in kind from the others. These potentials include linguistic, musical and logical/mathematical capacities, as well as spatial and bodily intelligences, and the ability to arrive at an emotional and mental sense of self and other people. Rather than reducing an individual's potential to a single score on an IQ test, it is the fostering and education of all these intelligences that should be our concern.