HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 289by others. We justly praise the special eff orts and achievements of indi-
viduals, but most will readily acknowledge the role of that very context:
ideas do not arise de novo in individual minds. As Einstein himself was
always ready to point out, the previous theories of Maxwell and Lorentz
“ led inevitably to the theory of relativity.” He insisted that the work of the
individual is so bound up with that of scientifi c contemporaries that it ap-
pears almost as an impersonal product of the generation.^35
Walter Isaac son points out in his book, Th e Innovators, that collaboration
underlies the creative pro cess that has produced virtually all scientifi c
revolutions, especially the current digital one. “Only in story books,” he
says, “do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a light bulb popping out
of t he head of a lone indiv idua l in a basement or garret or garage.” Rat her,
ideas seem to ferment in the cultural- cognition dynamics before appear-
ing as a new synthesis, as mentioned above. It is such considerations
that lead Guy Claxton and Sara Meadows to argue “that both the re-
search base and practical and moral considerations should lead us to ex-
clude ideas of innate and unchangeable degrees of ‘gift edness’ from our
educational practice as incorrect, inhuman, and counter- productive.”^36
In sum, what is described as specifi c gift edness is really demonstrating
something more general: how fast and how far development can proceed
in a par tic u lar domain through the kind of cognitive- cultural interactions
described above. I suggest that most children could become gift ed in that
sense. But not by the Jesuit boast, “Give me the child for his fi rst seven
years, and I’ll give you the man.” What seems most impor tant is being in
a position to access, assimilate, infl uence and feed off the global strength
of a t h r iv i ng cu lt u re. It is obstacles to t hat k i nd of pro cess t hat a re, broad ly,
the subject of the next chapter.
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