INTUITIVE AND REFLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

where a, b, c are any (natural) numbers. It is tempting to regard these properties as trivial, but
they are the very foundation of all numerical manipulation, as is explained in Chapter 9. For
example, without the first property the size of our shopping bill would depend on which we
bought first; and without the third, it would depend on which two items the assistant added
together first. These five properties are also, with the help of index notation, the foundation of
elementary algebra, as is explained in Chapter 12.
Invaluable though our system of counting numbers is, it has its limitations. With the help of
units it can be extended to make possible the measurement of continuous objects; but we soon
find that the existing numbers do not include all we need to deal with sizes less than a unit. So
new numbers, corresponding to these broken units, are introduced. But we are premature in
calling them numbers before we generalize the `number system' schema, we must satisfy
the two requirements of consistency and usefulness. (A pure mathematician would be content
with the first but the second usually follows, sooner or later. Few mathematical ideas of
great generality fail' to be useful, in the course of time.)
Consistency means that we have to invent ways of 'adding' and 'multiplying' these new
entities which have the five formal properties already listed. Usefulness means that the results
of these manipulations must tell us something we want to know in terms of the material
objects to which these entities refer. And though this is not an essential, it will be a great help
if the signs for these new entities can be developed out of signs in common use already (just
as we use the letters of our existing alphabet for newly invented words); and if the methods
for' adding' and 'multiplying' can make use of the large number of addition and multiplication
results which we have already learnt. All these requirements, when satisfied, make possible
the assimilation of the new number system to our existing and well-practised schema.
The way in which they are all met is a fascinating subject, and the reader who explores it
further wi1l learn much about the foundations of mathematical thinking. The same applies to
the development of positive and negative integers. rational numbers (often
identified with fractional numbers, ). and real numbers (the system which includes irrationals
like 2, ). Here we are concerned mainly with the process rather than the result, and
particularly with the activity of reflecting on the formal properties of the schemas which is
part of the process of mathematical generalization, and which is one of the most advanced
activities of reflective intelligence.
If this second-order functioning of intelligence is of such importance for progress to the more
advanced levels of mathematics, it is clearly of great interest to know at what ages it makes its
appearance, and how (if at all) we can aid and perhaps hasten its appearance. In answer to the
first question, we have a body of research by Infielder and Piaget which indicates that
children develop the ability to reflect on content during the ages from about 7 to 11, and to
manipulate concrete ideas in various ways, such as reversing (in imagination) an action,
thereby returning to the previous state of affairs. They found, however, that their subjects
could not reason formally consider the form of an argument independently of its content
until adolescence. Closely related to this, they found that the younger children could not argue
from a hypothesis if this hypothesis was contrary to their experience.
In this research, the subjects were taken 'as they were found'. That is to say, the experiments
indicate the progress of reflective intelligence as it developed in the Swiss schoolchildren
from whom the subjects were taken, by the interaction of their innate abilities with the
cultural and educational experiences which they encountered. What we do not at present
know is the extent to which the rate of development might be helped by teaching. To consider
a parallel: most children learn to sing spontaneously, just from growing up in a culture where

they hear other people singing. But this learning is greatly accelerated, and the final degree of
accomplishment greatly raised, in boys who become members of the choir of King's College,
Cambridge, or Magdalen College, Oxford. At present the development of reflective ability
and formal reasoning is not the subject of deliberate teaching; partly
The Growth of Loglc4l Thinking, Routledge & Kegan Paul. London, 1958.
because its importance has hardly been realized, and partly I cause we do not know how to
teach it, which presupposes a knowledge of how it is learnt.
A reasonable hypothesis about the latter is that any situation which requires a learner to
formulate his ideas explicitly, and to justify them by showing them to be logically derivable
from other and generally accepted ideas, would exercise and so develop the ability to reflect
on one's schemata. In other words, argument and discussion are useful ways of learning.
Those who have tried usually agree that trying to teach a topic exerts strong pressure to
clarify one's own thinking about it. A simple experiment has given support to this view. Two
parallel forms of secondary-school boys, aged about 14, were taught different topics by their
regular mathematics teachers. Each form was given a test on the topic it had been taught, and
divided into two halves of equal performance (as nearly as possible) as measured by these
tests. One half of each form then taught what they had learnt to their opposite numbers in the
other form, while the other (matched) half spent the same time in further practice at the same
topic. The boys who were acting as teachers thought that their pupils were going to be tested
on what they had been taught by them. Actually, at the end of the experiment all were retested on the topic which they had learnt during the first part of the experiment; the aim being
to compare the effects of teaching a topic to someone else, and continuing to practise it by
oneself. The results came out quite clearly in favour of the former.
Communication seems to emerge as one of the influences favourable to the development of
reflective intelligence. One of the factors involved is certainly the necessity to link ideas with
symbols; this will be 'considered at length in the next chapter. Another is the interaction of
one's own ideas with those of other people. To the extent that agreement is reached, the
resulting communality of ideas is less egocentric, more independent of individual experience.
And as has already been suggested, the cut and thrust of intellectual discussion forces on one
the necessity to clarify ideas in one's own mind, to state them in terms not likely to be
misunderstood, to justify them by revealing their relationships with other ideas; and also, to
modify them where