‘Intelligence’ before ‘intelligence tests’: Alfred Binet’s experiments on his daughters,1890–1903

Abstract

This article argues that Alfred Binet’s (1857–1911) initial innovation in the study of intelligence was the development of a novel epistemic context for the concept of intelligence, which later enabled the creation of his more famous intelligence tests (1905). This new framework can be traced back to a series of experiments Binet conducted on his daughters to study their intelligence, which were published in 1903. In these experiments, Binet presented intelligence as a disembodied object, closed to its environment and confined to the limits of the subject, while at the same time arguing that it could be an object for experimental-empirical-objective research. In doing so, Binet created a new mixture of different and, in some cases, contradictory approaches to studying the higher mental faculties. Looking at Binet’s work from the perspective of his experiments, this article argues, reveals a narrative that counteracts the prevalent functionalist interpretation of Binet’s work on intelligence. Those interpretations tend to emphasize the ‘usefulness’ of Binet’s discoveries, and by doing so, they gloss over the novelty and relevance of Binet’s concept of mind.