Chapter 6 - How ECT Explains Various Talent Achievements

Summary

Chapter 6, based on bioecological effectivity, cultural complexity, and evolving individuality, develops a conceptual framework of levels of talent achievement that can explain a myriad of phenomena of talent achievement. Five levels are identified (modular talent, precocious masters, consummated masters, unrelenting innovators, and game-changers). Central to this framework is the distinction between masters and makers; the master’s job is to preserve and refine the inherited culture, and the maker’s job is to produce variation and deviation that changes culture. The two can create tensions between norms and freedom, between conservatism and progressivism. The chapter concludes the one long argument of ECT by summarizing the following five features: (1) the evolving complexity of social and developmental interactions and experiences that encompass biological, experiential, cognitive-affective, and sociocultural levels of analysis (Chapter 1); (2) the two “invisible hands” governing characteristic adaptation (direction) and maximal adaptation (persistence) (Chapters 2 and 3); (3) the three critical transitions for sustaining one’s long-term development (Chapter 4); (4) the four levels of self-organization toward excellence and evolving individuality; and (5) the five levels of talent achievement from masters and makers.