288 HUMAN INTELLIGENCEthe search for genes for “gift edness.” I mentioned in chapter 1 how groups
in Britain and China are scanning DNA from blood samples from the one
in a thousand individuals with the highest IQ scores. Th ey hope to fi nd
the magic genes prominent in such individuals that can tell us how they
became so gift ed. Others have suggested that this could one day help
parents select embryos with ge ne tic predispositions for high intelligence.
Th is seems to me to be highly superstitious.
More in ter est ing than such (almost certainly futile) searches are the
conditions in which “gift edness” develops. If there is one certain conclu-
sion coming out of research into gift ed people it is the way they have been
deeply immersed in a very specifi c aspect of culture, either by their own
motivation or that of parents or other patrons. One thing I mentioned
earlier about refl ective abstraction is that knowledge easily snowballs
once triggered in a domain. Th at is what seems to be confi rmed in the
research.
In his book, Outliers: Th e Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell says that
few stars of any fi eld succeed without putting in at least ten thousand hours
of practice. Th at includes prodigies, such as Mozart. Also, he says, few
achieve great success without being handed privileged experiences early
in life. He mentions specifi c characters in that category, such as Bill Joy,
founder of Sun Microsystems, and Bill Gates, creator of Microsoft. Simi-
larly, in his study of high- ability children, Michael Howe reported how
“high achievements always depend upon diligent eff orts... demanding
thousands of hours committed to training and practice.”^33 He also noted
how chances are increased by early engagement in the domain.
Interestingly, one of the conclusions of Joan Freeman’s longitudinal
study (which did include control groups) is that “in terms of conventional
success in life such as high examination marks, rising up the corporate
ladder or making money, the primary building blocks were always keen-
ness and hard work, allied with suffi cient ability, formal educational op-
portunity and an emotionally supportive home... these factors are found
over and over again.”^34 I would, of course, interpret “suffi cient ability” as
itself a product of development in a culture, and not a mysterious consti-
tutional entity.
Th e same applies to the “heights” of knowledge, as in scientifi c discov-
ery. Eff ort is crucial, as is social context and the cultural tools provided
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