Gardner

An intelligence is the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings—a definition that says nothing about either the sources of these abilities or the proper means of “testing” them.

There is a relation between intelligences and domains, but it is crucial not to confound these two realms. A person with musical intelligence is likely to be attracted to, and to be successful in, the domain of music. But the domain of musical performance requires intelligences beyond the musical (for example, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence and the personal intelligences), just as musical intelligence can be mobilized for domains beyond music in the strict sense (as in dance or in advertising).

The trio of intelligence, domain, and field has proved not only useful for unraveling a host of issues raised by MI theory, but also particularly fruitful for studies of creativity. As formulated originally by Csikszentmihalyi (1988), the felicitous question is: Where is creativity? The answer is that creativity should not be thought of as inhering principally in the brain, the mind, or the personality of a single individual. Rather, creativity should be thought of as emerging from the interactions of three nodes: the individual with his or her own profile of competences and values; the domains available for study and mastery within a culture; and the judgments rendered by the field that is deemed competent within a culture.