Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/moms-beef-stew-five-ingredients-of-intelligence/5023951/
The smell of my mother’s beef stew simmering in the kitchen on a cold winter’s day is easily the best comfort-food memory I have. Mom’s stew was like a warm hug in a bowl.
She once marched me into the kitchen to teach me how to make her famous beef stew. This was no easy task as she had the annoying habit of changing the recipe almost every time she made it. “It depends on who’s coming over for dinner,” Mom would explain, “or whatever we have lying around the house.” According to her, only two elements were critical to pull off her masterpiece: the quality of the beef and the gravy surrounding the meat.
Like Mom’s stew, human intelligence has two essential components, both fundamentally linked to our evolutionary need to survive.
The first is the ability to record information, called “crystallized intelligence.” The second component is the capacity to adapt that information to unique situations by reasoning and problem solving, called “fluid intelligence.”
In other words, we as humans have the ability to learn rapidly from our mistakes and the ability to apply that learning in unique combinations to our ever-changing world. Intelligence, seen through ...