“Intelligence asserts itself above all not in art, nor in science, but in intuition of life.” BY MARIA POPOVA In her spare, stunning poem “Optimism,” Jane Hirshfield reverences the “blind intelligence” by which a tree relentlessly orients toward the light to survive — a kind of unreasoning, life-hungry intuition distinctly different from the way we humans define and measure our own intelligence, our measurements and definitions mired in myriad cultural biases and blind spots. The Western model of intelligence, with its fixation on the logical-mathematical mind, is in some deep sense the ultimate “blind intelligence,” dappled with blind spots that obscure so much … Continue reading José Ortega y Gasset on the True Meaning and Measure of Intelligence