“The nature of intelligence came under intense scholastic scrutiny around the turn of the twentieth century. As the discipline of psychology flourished, notable pioneers like Alfred Binet attempted to quantify and qualify the nature of human intelligence. Human beings have always been aware of the differences between homo sapiens and the rest of the animal kingdom, but until recently have been unable to go beyond the domains of philosophy or religion to explain them. One of the most noticeable traits that distinguish the human from the animal is the nebulous notion of intelligence. But what is intelligence? This question has weighed on thinking minds since the dawn of civilization. With the advent of the scientific method and its application to the field of psychology, intelligence tests enabled scientists and laypeople to analyze intelligence with numbers, statistics, and hard facts. But these intelligence tests have obvious limitations and drawbacks. Not only are they naive and superficial, they fail to take into account the awesome diversity of human experience. Binet did not take into account the cultural factors that inform intelligence.”