“Vigneron’, intelligent 9 times… you will be (master Yoda)

Posted on | July 5, 2005

Read in Le Figaro an interesting dossier on precocious children and their intelligence.

According to the article, Howard Gardner, professor of Science and Eduction at Harvard, listed 9 forms of intelligence: musical (Mozart); movement (the mime artist Marceau); logic-mathematics (Albert Einstein); linguistical (Thomas Stearns Eliot); spatial (Pablo Picasso); interpersonal (Gandhi), which enables one to understand others; intrapersonal (Sigmund Freud) which gives one the faculty to know oneself; naturalist (Charles Darwin) and finally «existential» (Churchill) which he defined as «the capacity to think of our origins and our desitny».

Outside of music and movement (even though to see a man or a woman who quickly prune the vines ‘en gobelet’ is an incredible spectacle of precision and balance), a good ‘vigneron’ must mobilise all forms of his intelligence either daily or during certain specific periods of the year. For sure, some are more adept than others. Some ‘vignerons’, one must accept also, are more richly endowed than others. Many of them on the other hand don’t know how to use their «interpersonal» intelligence and have alwys detested outside contact, tastings, sales. For those that have poor linguistics, which may either be interpreting technical docuements or English (one ought to hear my jabbering Pakistani accent…)  well, they are legion. I ask myself the question: do the bio-dynamicists exhibit super intelligence when it comes to the « naturalist » kind?:)  I leave you to amuse yourself by studying your favourite ‘vigneron’, before your next visit, to evaluate his performance under the various criteria…

For my part I prefer to try and develop my « emotional intelligence », a concept which it appears caused a furore in the USA (see the article) and which consists in identifying the emotions, analysing them, mastering them, and then harnessing them to one’s motivation, but also to understand and share the emotions of others. All these qualities permit one to control one’s impulsiveness, to take the right decision at the right moment, to adapt to situations in the most efficient way, to manage one’s relationships with others and make progress in one’s work. This one learns at work and in one’s everyday life. And for all of this, perhaps the school of wine is the best university.

Hervè Bizeul

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