What Is Intelligence?

This is a fascinating exploration of the nature and power of human intelligence, and the way it has singled us out from the rest of the animal kingdom. Human success in the face of the rigours of the physical world and human dominance within the animal kingdom are due to intelligence: those tools of the mind that give us access to the stored experience of humankind and allow us to reason, to test our ideas, and to plan for the future. How we define intelligence, what it consists of, how it evolved, and how we can enhance it in the future are the questions addressed by the eight expert contributors to this remarkable book. The volume originates in the seventh annual series of Darwin College Lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1992, and includes contributions from Simha Arom, George Butterworth, Daniel Bennett, Richard Gregory, Nicholas Mackintosh, Roger Penrose, Roger Schank and Lawrence Birnbaum.