In many ways, writing a novel, creating art, and scientific discovery seem to require different faculties, although clearly some attributes must be the same. In terms of intelligence (most IQ tests evaluate writers and artists lower than mathematicians and scientists), ability to integrate information, perception and application are they really actually comparable? Was Shakespeare the intellectual equal of Newton, Heidegger of Einstein, and Geothe of Kant? Were their cognitive capacities different in scale or application?
I think there are different aptitudes involved which creates different kind of intelligence over a long period of time. These different aptitudes are natural phenomenon. If everyone in the world had only one aptitude to become a mathematician, the society would collapse. The aptitude causes a person to focus his mind on one subject with great interest. This focus allows the person to spend maximum time on that subject. The more time a person spends on a specific subject, the more experience he develops about that subject. Simultaneously he also develops his intelligence with respect to that field. This is the reason scientist or Artist with 30 years of experience is more respected than the one with 2 years experience.
Whether some aptitudes are lower than the other can be understood with the theory of evolution of soul over many cycles of birth and death. Because of such evolution, person’s ability to perceive finer and finer aspects of the creation is greatly enhanced. This makes the person wonder, whether one kind of aptitude is lower and another kind higher? Such difference could be clearly seen between a person who’s spiritual consciousness is awakened and a person whose spiritual consciousness is not awakened.
I'm not convinced that spiritual consciousness has any impact on the development of potential, or that notions of higher or lower are necessarily what the question asked as its takes the matter into areas that other questions might address. Whether Newton's cognitive abilities were of a different order to Shakespeares is not surely a spiritual concern, although I can now see flaws in my question.
Newton’s cognitive abilities were more oriented towards acquisition of knowledge concerning his physical surrounding and Shakespeare’s cognitive abilities were more oriented towards understanding human emotions and human interactions. Knowledge and understanding are faculties of Intelligence for which the Sanskrit word is Buddhi from which the word Buddha is derived, which means, the one who is of the nature of pure intelligence. Therefore there is something like pure and impure intelligence which affects cognitive faculty of the person.
Not convinced, sorry.
I find Shakespeare deeply philosophical. He was simply working in a different intellectual area, and therefore not required to produce a systemic work of ideas. Hamlet evolves a perception of personality begun by Montaigne, identifying and developing introspection. In another time, he might have written vast tomes on psychology or the nature of modern individuality.
Purity of intelligence comes into consideration in the ability of focusing the mind on a specific aspect of existence such that there remains no distinction between intelligence as the subject and the existence as the object of focus. There are only handful of people in the history of the world who had such ability as Buddha had. Becoming a philosopher or writing books on psychology does not require a great degree of perfection of the intelligence.
This supposes there is such a thing as a measurable "something" called intelligence. Perhaps this question is more an invitation to develop a finer view of human cognitive capacities; the rough idea of "intelligence" has led to unproductive debates, such as those surrounding racist ideas around the bell curve
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