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POPULAR science writers face a dilemma. Laypeople come to science with their own systematic ideas about how the world works 鈥� ideas often far removed from scientific ones. To explain science effectively, we need to start from these everyday intuitions and move readers towards the scientific concepts. Yet we often end up simply reinforcing the initial intuitions rather than overturning them. No matter how carefully we report and interpret, the reader鈥檚 final picture will often be quite different from the one we set out to paint.

I鈥檓 no exception. I write: 鈥淪cience shows that babies are brilliant learners,鈥� and readers think: 鈥淚f I buy the latest educational gizmo for my one-year-old, he鈥檒l go to Harvard.鈥� Popular science may even create fabulous intellectual monsters: chimeras of scientific and everyday ideas that take on a life of their own. One example is the way research on the lateralisation of brain function has been hugely oversimplified into the idea that right and left brain control different skills.

Of course, this may not always matter much: colourful metaphors in physics or cosmology can give readers a feel for otherwise extraordinarily difficult concepts. The real problem arises when it comes to the human sciences of biology, psychology or neurology. Everyone has beliefs about human nature, and often those beliefs have deep social and political roots and implications. Scientific psychologists need both to engage with those beliefs and revise them.

All of the above is a preamble to thinking about two new books that exemplify the science writer鈥檚 dilemma: Daniel Goleman鈥檚 Social Intelligence and Howard Gardner鈥檚 Multiple Intelligences. Both authors have already written best-sellers proposing new kinds of intelligence (鈥渆motional intelligence鈥� in the case of science writer Goleman, and 鈥渒inaesthetic, musical and interpersonal intelligence鈥�, among others, in the case of Gardner, who is a distinguished Harvard educator). Their latest books may well become as popular as the earlier ones, but for me they are simultaneously attractive and troubling because they come to challenge popular intuitions about 鈥渋ntelligence鈥� but may end up reinforcing them.

The attractions first. Both writers are effective popularisers of science, and both books are clear, informative and readable in different ways. Goleman鈥檚 is anecdotal and journalistic, covering a very wide range of research, while Gardner is elegant and magisterial about his own earlier research.

Goleman鈥檚 book is a rich compendium of recent developments in developmental and social psychology and the burgeoning field of social neuroscience. Psychologists have discovered that humans have particularly sophisticated skills to help us understand each other. One prominent evolutionary speculation proposes that it was the ability to understand other people that fuelled human cognitive evolution. More recently, neuroscience has confirmed that extensive and specialised brain circuitry is indeed devoted to understanding others.

That aside, neuroscience often tells us little more than we already know. We knew that the seat of emotion was somewhere above the neck and between the ears; now we know that it is closer to the bottom of the skull than the top. Still, there is a great deal in Goleman鈥檚 book to interest and inform the general reader who may still think Freud is the last word on the science of human relationships.

Gardner鈥檚 book, on the other hand, updates his earlier ideas on multiple intelligences, and charts the positive impact these ideas have had on educational practice: more emphasis on meeting the needs of the individual, focusing on a few topics in depth, and cultivating learning and thinking rather than the mere answering of standardised questions. At a time when such ideas are under severe political attack, Gardner鈥檚 eloquent re-articulation and defence of them is especially welcome.

Now for the troublesome bit 鈥� and the dilemma. What鈥檚 intelligence got to do with it? The runaway success of Gardner鈥檚 and Goleman鈥檚 earlier books parallels the notoriety of Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein鈥檚 The Bell Curve, in which they argued that racial inequalities were due to genetic differences in intelligence. There seems to be a popular fascination, not to say obsession, with the idea of intelligence. But outside of a narrow subfield within psychometrics, 鈥渋ntelligence鈥� simply doesn鈥檛 play a role in current scientific views of the mind. Not one of my 40 colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, would say they study intelligence, which is particularly striking since most would agree that they study topics that seem closely related to intelligence, such as cognition, reasoning, inference and learning.

The lay concept of 鈥渋ntelligence鈥� is of a kind of substance, of 鈥渟tuff鈥�, that different people have in different degrees, like cholesterol or blood sugar. By contrast, the scientific concept of 鈥渃ognition鈥� involves complex interactions between many varied computational and neurological mechanisms with long developmental histories. Ultimately, these complex interactions allow people to make their way in the world. The popular concept of 鈥渋ntelligence鈥� is much like the popular biological concepts of 鈥渆nergy鈥� or 鈥渧itality鈥�: it sees a complicated set of functional relations as a single force.

鈥淭he lay concept of intelligence is of a substance, of 鈥榮tuff鈥欌��

Most developmental and cognitive psychologists simply don鈥檛 talk about intelligence at all, singular or plural. They talk, rather, about 鈥渋ntuitive systems鈥� of knowledge, such as 鈥渇olk鈥� theories of psychology or physics or number systems or grammars that allow us to make both predictions and generalisations. Or they talk about computational capacities such as causal inference, or statistical induction, that enable us to learn these intuitive systems. However, none of these mechanisms divides neatly into 鈥渢ypes鈥� of intelligence.

Goleman and Gardner recognise this divide between intuitive and scientific ideas. In fact, it was clearly the motivation for Gardner鈥檚 original work. And yet, as Gardner himself sometimes ruefully remarks, the very success of the 鈥渕ultiple intelligences鈥� idea suggests that the audience really doesn鈥檛 get it. Rather than seeing that intelligence isn鈥檛 a substance at all, people now seem to think it is several substances 鈥� social, emotional and logico-mathematical.

So what makes the idea of intelligence so captivating when it has such little scientific warranty? I think it may have more to do with what I call 鈥渂aboonery鈥� (the systems of status, hierarchy and dominance we share with primates) than with cognition. In human societies, status is related to objective sources of power: land in a feudal society, wealth in an industrial one. But people often seem driven to explain status in terms of mysterious extra substances that the elite have and the plebs don鈥檛: 鈥渘obility鈥� and 鈥済entlemanliness鈥� instead of inheritance, or 鈥渆ntrepreneurial spirit鈥� and 鈥渉ard work鈥� instead of cash.

In our post-industrial knowledge economy, schools and grades are what really count. 鈥淚ntelligence鈥� is our 鈥渘obility鈥�, the magic stuff that gets us to the top and keeps us there. However mysterious it may be, at least everyone agrees that it helps you do well at school. No modern parent would ever say 鈥渕y kid may not be that bright, but he works hard鈥�, as their industrial immigrant forebears might have done. Instead, our universal complaint that 鈥渉e鈥檚 really smart but he just won鈥檛 apply himself鈥� is a disguised boast. Bill Clinton鈥檚 Rhodes scholarship erased his poor Arkansas upbringing and made him part of the elite, while George W. Bush鈥檚 flamboyant stupidity cancels out his rich Connecticut childhood and makes him a regular guy.

No wonder people are glad to hear that there鈥檚 more intelligence around than they thought. Talking about 鈥渆motional intelligence鈥� or 鈥渟ocial intelligence鈥� is like talking about 鈥渢he nobility of labour鈥� or 鈥渂eing a natural gentleman鈥�. It鈥檚 a way to soften the brutal realities of an arbitrary scholastic pecking order. This is a more attractive and humane picture of intelligence than the genetic scarcity picture painted in The Bell Curve, but it may be just as removed from what Goleman and Gardner intended.