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Once
upon a time, a man was planting seeds. Along came an associate,
and asked him if it was his own mind making him do it the way he
was. Why, yes, he replied. In that case, said one man to another,
there might be a better way. And so there was.
Minds do change. Then why does this book's
title, Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and
Other People's Minds, sound so overambitious?
The real reason this book is so hard to resist,
though, is Howard
Gardner's opening line: "Books can be
self-referential." How often does a first line make you bet
what the last line will say? Well, it's roundabout the fifth-last
line, as it turns out; but the immediate self-reference is to the
way Gardner himself changed his mind about the multidisciplinary
focus of this book in the fall of 2001.
Multidisciplinary? Gardner, by trade, is a
psychology man: a professor of cognition at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education. He is | 
