The aim of this article is to draw up a sketch of the scientific researches about intelligence, starting from the cultural concept, and the recent mind's theory and on the ethic and political consequences. Firstly the endeavor of evaluating the mental age and IQ in Europe and the Unites States is detached. Following the attempt of the factorialists to go deeper into the intellectual process, throughout its foundations. The search of the general factor by Spearman through the tetraic equation and the enlargement of this bifactorial theory bound for a hierachical conception is discussed. Thurstone's methodological objection and the creation of the centroid method led to a multifactorial theory. Guilford's epistemological criticism to the prior radical empirical model, led him to describe in advance three dimensions of intelligence, including five categories of operations six of products and four of contents - in the original model. The Thorndike' s former position and the enviromentalist multimodal point of view, founded on the learning, is discussed as well as the universal and rational position of Genetic Epistemology with the pedagogic consequences like the radical autonomy of the ontogenetic development. The social perspective of Vigotzky and the contributions of the sovietic psychology are concerned. The closeness of linguists and psychologists is analyzed and the Bruner's contributions along four stages. The great debate between inherits and the environmentalism and its social and political implications. The emergence of the metacogniton as well the theory's theory, the mind's theory, and the new kind of diagnosis and pedagogical intervention. The meaning of the intellectual development for a politics of social emancipation.
Cognitive Psychology; Intelligence; Education; History of Psychology