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The world rests on a turtle, but on what does that turtle rest? A reply to Haier and Jung.

Article Excerpt
According to Indian legend, there is a paradox whereby it is said that all the world rests upon a giant three-legged turtle. That answers the question of what is holding up the world. But then the question arises of what holds up the turtle. One answer, of course, is a turtle beneath the turtle. And what holds up that turtle? Yet another one. And so we end up in an infinite regress where every time one seems to solve a problem, another problem emerges. This is the conundrum at the base of biological research into intelligence and creativity. The layers of inquiry seem unending.

Resisting temptation is hard. Haier and Jung (2008) have succeeded, however, in resisting the temptation to paint a bright portrait of all the wonderful things brain-imaging studies of intelligence and creativity can tell us right now for our practices in education. They do not claim to have identified the final "turtle." On the contrary, they have been scrupulously careful in reminding us that, for the most part, biological approaches to instruction and assessment are a promissory note. They are to be congratulated for the measured and responsible note they strike in describing where we are and where we need to go before we can draw conclusions about education from biological research.

I have little quibbles that could become the topic of a rejoinder. For example, I believe there are theories that go beyond general-intelligence (g) theory that can help us better understand the nature of intelligence (e.g., Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000; Sternberg, 1997). But I believe that an argument over the strengths and limitations of g theory is out of place here, and this issue has been discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002). Instead, I would like to elaborate on points the authors have made that point out cautions about where biological research is taking us.

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