I am honored to have the opportunity to offer a few thoughts on the four articles that make up this special issue on Rethinking Human Potential and add a few of my own thoughts on the topic. It is a timely and relevant topic for the field of gifted education, a field that has been undergoing a series of challenges to its assumptions and practices in recent years. This special issue can be seen as another effort to help the field find a set of assumptions about the nature of giftedness to guide its practices in the 21st century. The fact that this special issue focuses on “human potential” and not giftedness and/ or talent immediately tells us that very broad issues will be examined, that big questions will be posed, and that the possible answers to these questions may shake the foundations of the established field. Indeed, that may be the goal of this special issue. The contributors all give credit to the century of work in the field that preceded them and see their efforts as building on the valued work of their predecessors. Before commenting on each of the contributions, let me put my bona fides on the table for being qualified to comment on the topic of human potential. I spent a year as a member of the Van Leer Project at Harvard working with Howard Gardner (this issue) and others on the “Project on Human Potential.” It was this project that spawned Gardner’s now-famous theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983). A few years later, Lynn Goldsmith and I published our 10-year study of child prodigies (Feldman, 1986) under the title, Nature’s Gambit: Child Prodigies and the Development of Human Potential. Although being not the only focus of my interests, the study of human potential has been a central one for me for many years.

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21世纪人类潜能观：评“重新思考人类潜能”特刊

我很荣幸有机会对构成本期《重新思考人类潜力》的特刊的四篇文章发表一些看法，并就该主题发表一些我自己的看法。对于资优教育领域来说，这是一个及时且相关的话题，该领域近年来对其假设和实践经历了一系列挑战。本期特刊可以看作是帮助该领域找到一套关于天才性质的假设以指导其在 21 世纪的实践的另一项努力。本期特刊关注“人的潜力”而不是天赋和/或才能，这一事实立即告诉我们，将研究非常广泛的问题，将提出大问题，而这些问题的可能答案可能会动摇既定的领域。确实，这可能是本期特刊的目标。贡献者都称赞他们之前在该领域的百年工作，并将他们的努力视为建立在前人宝贵工作的基础上。在评论每个贡献之前，让我把我的诚意放在桌子上，因为我有资格评论人类潜力这个话题。我花了一年时间作为哈佛 Van Leer 项目的成员，与 Howard Gardner（本期）和其他人一起参与“人类潜能项目”。正是这个项目催生了加德纳现在著名的多元智能理论（加德纳，1983）。几年后，林恩·戈德史密斯和我发表了我们对神童的 10 年研究（费尔德曼，1986 年），题为《自然的策略：神童和人类潜能的发展》。虽然不是我唯一的兴趣焦点，