Scientific Applications Of Intelligence

The consistent emphasis on scientific progress in modern society has perverted how many understand the nature of intelligence.  Rather than recognize intelligence as an individual's ability to wield reason itself, they present memorization of scientific claims and the ability to explain these claims as if they constitute intelligence.  While reasoning from scientific premises is useful, this does not mean that a person is intelligent to any particularly praiseworthy degree.

Thoroughly understanding scientific models and concepts does require some degree of intelligence, as even mild comprehension of sensory perceptions requires at least a small grasp of reason.  The grasp of reason, after all, is all that intelligence is, and one must grasp reason to understand anything at all, science included (or else one could not distinguish between scientific concepts).  It is therefore correct to say that someone who thoroughly comprehends scientific ideas is intelligent on one level, but scientific reasoning is the philosophically lowest and most trivial use of reason.

The most thorough use of intelligence is the grasp and use of reason itself independent of books, social learning, or emphasis on sensory experiences.  This leaves no place for the scientific method to stand alongside the exercise of pure reason as the supreme manifestation of intelligence.  To understand contemporary models related to electricity, gravity, or thermodynamics does indeed require the ability to reason, but reason itself transcends these (ultimately) unverifiable models.

It is not that scientific experimentation is pragmatically useless, but that it is far from a sign of the highest intelligence possible.  In many cases, modern people tend to have this backwards: they think that strict logic is pragmatically useful and that science is the greatest expression of the human intellect!  This common mindset is the inverse of what a rational worldview holds to.  The person who wields undiluted reason is not lacking in intelligence even if he or she could benefit from a more expansive education about contemporary ideas on scientific matters.