The Practice of Thinking Quotes

“There is no underlying principle or reproducible pattern associated with extraordinary intelligence exactly because it operates prior to principles and patterns. The only way to understand it is in historical perspective, when the naked New has already been enrobed/incorporated into a system of distinctions, labels, concepts and relations; when it has already become organised into a containing narrative. It is then, in retrospect, that we can reflect and see it for what it is or is not. Even so, this is not anymore the instance per se that we are talking about but its representation in relation to an already constructed narrative and where both representation and narrative emerge as secondary products after the fact. So paradoxically, instances of extraordinary intelligence are irretrievable as such; we can only follow the traces and after-effects they have left in our minds, much the same as we learn about elementary particles in physics only by following the traces they have left in a bubble chamber.”
― Weaver D.R. Weinbaum, The Practice of Thinking: Cultivating the Extraordinary

“The ambition of our initiative is to mobilise a cognitive power that we are referring to as ‘extraordinary intelligence’. As many of you – participants of the project – have been pointing out, this ambition tends to evoke considerable attraction and equally considerable resentment, or at least reservation. The objections are partly ethical and political, partly cultural and psychological. When critiqued conceptually, the phrasing also calls for a serious re-visiting of the notion of intelligence. The ‘extraordinary’ we are after turns out to be less problematic:
the way we put it, it is a progressive, dynamic term. ‘Extraordinary’ does not come to mean ‘greater than’, along a pre-established scale of measurement or relative to a baseline in a population, but rather ‘greater again, and yet again’, displaying qualities that outgrow themselves. The extraordinary intelligence would then be a capability that continuously exceeds its own limits, proving to be more insightful, more far-sighted and more potent than one might normally project. But what is ‘intelligence’? Clearly, we cannot be referring here to what is captured by IQ tests. The intelligence quotient is an iconic psychometric construct and the primary feature of such measurement methods is their reliable reference to traits that are persistent – ideally throughout the lifetime of the individuals assessed. If our interest is in an ever-changing, ever-growing intelligence, we cannot be applying a measure that by its very definition seeks to trace an invariant.”
― Marta Lenartowicz, The Practice of Thinking: Cultivating the Extraordinary

“The ambition of our initiative is to mobilise a cognitive power
that we are referring to as ‘extraordinary intelligence’. As many of you – participants
of the project – have been pointing out, this ambition tends to evoke considerable
attraction and equally considerable resentment, or at least reservation. The
objections are partly ethical and political, partly cultural and psychological. When
critiqued conceptually, the phrasing also calls for a serious re-visiting of the notion
of intelligence. The ‘extraordinary’ we are after turns out to be less problematic:
the way we put it, it is a progressive, dynamic term. ‘Extraordinary’ does not come
to mean ‘greater than’, along a pre-established scale of measurement or relative
to a baseline in a population, but rather ‘greater again, and yet again’, displaying
qualities that outgrow themselves. The extraordinary intelligence would then be a
capability that continuously exceeds its own limits, proving to be more insightful,
more far-sighted and more potent than one might normally project. But what is
‘intelligence’? Clearly, we cannot be referring here to what is captured by IQ tests.
The intelligence quotient is an iconic psychometric construct and the primary feature
of such measurement methods is their reliable reference to traits that are persistent
– ideally throughout the lifetime of the individuals assessed. If our interest is in
an ever-changing, ever-growing intelligence, we cannot be applying a measure that
by its very definition seeks to trace an invariant.”
― Marta Lenartowicz, The Practice of Thinking: Cultivating the Extraordinary