A Genealogy of the Western Rationalist Hegemony

This paper traces the development of critical rationality and rationally defined intelligence from ancient times through to the present. The idea of intelligence will be situated within a civilisational perspective, and in particular the western rationalist hegemony. Thus the development of western theories of mind is first traced, up until the beginnings of the modern era. Then seminal relevant moments within modern psychology and science are identified. The seminal historical moments which have created the modernist discourses on mind and intelligence will be identified via genealogy. Genealogies seek to determine which discourses have been victorious in constituting the present, how they have traveled through history and the points in which the focus issue has become contentious (Inayatullah 2002: 27). This paper identifies seminal events in the history of western rationality, wherein the mechanistic worldview became dominant (and thereafter largely implicit and unconscious). It analyses the philosophy and/or science within which these events have been embedded. The focus is upon the relationship of this process to dominant mainstream mechanistic depictions of mind and intelligence within modernity. In regard to the positing of intelligence theory within current dominant discourses, the argument can be depicted as with Diagram 1, above. In the diagram above each level is defined and mediated by the level preceding it. The employment of ways of knowing mediated by historical, civilisational and paradigmatic factors has vitally affected the development of science and scientific conceptions of intelligence and consciousness. The argument here is predicated upon an essential distinction between rational and intuitive ways of knowing. This is illustrated in Diagram 2, below. There are two intuition types posited here. Inferential intuition is a mundane representation of intuition. It is a subconscious processing of experiential and sensory knowledge. It incorporates no metaphysical or Abstract