Intelligence is not a single quantity but a contested construct — measured by IQ tests that capture important but partial dimensions of cognitive capacity while excluding creativity, wisdom, social intelligence, and embodied knowing. Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences, Sternberg's triarchic theory, and the Sutras' own differentiation of levels of understanding each challenge the reductive notion that intelligence is a fixed, unitary, rankable property. Understanding intelligence requires understanding what any given measure is and is not measuring, and whose cognitive style it was designed to recognize.
Each step builds on the last.