I Like To Watch...

The Iidiot Savant: Savant is French for Learned One, and Idiot? Well, every village has one and mine's looking for me as we speak...

Dichotomous you say? Like military intelligence, government efficiency, or jumbo shrimp? I think not...

In his book Frame of Mind, Harvard Prof. Howard Gardner defines intelligence as, "The ability to solve problems or to create a product." By that definition, I'm a genius, (And I ain't no genius, folks...). Oh, don't get me wrong - I am the guy you want for solving problems, and I've made guitars, created songs, training programs, all kinds of stuff. I took an IQ test about 3 years ago and was told I scored a 173, which, by definition, means I can't be an idiot savant, (I believe that requires an IQ of around 25...) So am I smart? My answer is, not necessarily - All this kind of thing measures is what intelligence can do, not what it is...

Dr. Lee Warren points out in a piece for the Plim Report in '96 - With recent advances in Quantum Physics, "Intelligence is far too vast to be limited exclusively to the physical body or located primarily in the brain." Now there's a thought for you, (Pun intended...)

Idiot savants can't care for themselves, can't read, write, or learn in classic sense, yet they can and do know truly vast amounts of things about stuff - Math, zip codes, phone books, music, and other esoterica: If they can't learn, and if they're technically idiots, how do they know all this stuff? Dr. Joseph Pierce, in his book Evolution's End, states that, "The savant has not acquired, could not acquire, and is quite incapable of acquiring, the information he so liberally dispenses." So where's it come from? Pierce goes on to point out that the savant, when asked how he or she knows what they know, would be confused by the abstract nature of the question and unable to answer. These folks can solve huge mathematic equations almost instantly, play a complex musical composition back perfectly after hearing it only once, or build perfect scale models of a things they've only seen once - It is pretty stunning, especially when one ponders from whence it comes...

There have been attempts to explain the phenomenon via Quantum Physics, (Basically, seeing specific intelligence as a field not unlike electromagnetism), which is kinda off the deep end of my thought process. Dr. Warren, who appears to be an intelligent design kinda guy, seems to think that savants are a perfect example of divine inspiration; the holy spirit pumping intelligence into folks who are otherwise incapable of learning. Hey! Maybe that's why I can recall, verbatim, the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, most early Saturday Night Live Skits, and more songs than you can shake a stick at! Frankly, I find his theory farfetched at best: I mean, I believe that God moves in mysterious ways, but that kind of gift would be more of a cruel joke than anything else, and that's not the God I know...

It is, nonetheless, a fascinating phenomenon that raises many more question for me than I have found plausible answers for.