The Nature and Nurture of Talent

David Yun Dai is Professor of Educational Psychology and Methodology at the State University of New York at Albany and the author of The Nature and Nurture of Giftedness (2010), which is a prelude to this book. He has published 13 books and over 130 articles and was the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award conferred by the National Association for Gifted Children in 2017.

• Introduction; 1. Evolving complexity theory (ECT) of talent development: an overview of 'one long argument'; 2. The question of what develops: talent as a new machine made of old parts; 3. The question of how talent develops: individual niche-picking and cultural selection as two invisible hands; 4. The question of when critical events should take place: developmental windows and progressions in talent development; 5. The question of where: cultural evolution and how it transforms talent and talent development; 6. How ECT explains various talent achievements; 7. ECT in a broader landscape of theoretic models: what is new; 8. Implications of ECT for talent identification and assessment of developmental progressions; 9. Implications of ECT for promoting human excellence; 10. Implications of ECT for research methodology: toward a new epistemology of human excellence; Epilogue: is AI a threat to human excellence?; Postscript: remembering Larry; Glossary.

'Improvements in life for individuals and in the lives of societies begin with deep analyses of what has come before, what exists at the present, and what dreams could perhaps become realities. David Dai's new book, The Nature and Nurture of Talent: A New Foundation for Human Excellence, inspires just this sort of contemplation about talent development and optimizing life for the many. Having read it twice, I feel compelled to do so again, as it has inspired me to shake up a few things in my own personal talent space.' F. Richard Olenchak, Purdue University