Imagination

Abstract: This Element explores the nature of both imagination and creative thinking in an effort to understand the relation between them and also to understand their role in the vast array of activities in which they are typically implicated, from art, music, and literature to technology, medicine, and science. Focusing on the contemporary philosophical literature, it will take up several interrelated questions: What is imagination, and how does it fit into the cognitive architecture of the mind? What is creativity? Is imagination required for creativity? Is creativity required for imagination? Is a person simply born either imaginative or not (and likewise, either creative or not), or are imagination and creativity skills that can be cultivated? And finally, are imagination and creativity uniquely human capacities, or can they be had by nonbiological entities such as AI systems?

Abstract: While discussions of the imagination have been limited in philosophy of science, this is beginning to change. In recent years, a vast literature on imagination in science has emerged. This paper surveys the current field, including the changing attitudes towards the scientific imagination, the fiction view of models, how the imagination can lead to knowledge and understanding, and the value of different types of imagination. It ends with a discussion of the gaps in the current literature, indicating avenues for future research.

Abstract: The term imagination and its derivatives often serve as points of departures, yet a concise understanding of imagination in anthropology is lacking. In this paper, we argue for a contextualized anthropological approach to imagination; a complex notion which has been used to describe the human capacity to mentally (re)create that what is not materially present; the creative process of imagining; and the individual and social products of such a process. We address terminological particularities, conceptual differences, and related concepts in addition to discussing the importance of methods and the poetic imagination. In doing so, we consolidate and elaborate on previous analytical and conceptual works to provide a more explicit middle-range theory of imagination from an anthropological perspective. While we propose understanding imagination as a guiding action in situations of uncertainty or ignorance and emphasize focusing on everyday processes and practices, our discussions provide a framework to discuss and compare empirically grounded findings regarding imagination.

Abstract: A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance attracted international acclaim in 1990, winning both the Booker Prize and the Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize. In her long and eminent career, Byatt has steadily published both fiction and non-fiction, the latest of which has not, until now, been given full critical consideration. Enter Jane Campbell’s new book, A.S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination , a comprehensive critical reading of Byatt’s fiction from The Shadow of the Sun and The Game , published in the 1960s, to A Whistling Woman (2002). The book begins with an overview of Byatt’s writing and, drawing on her interviews and essays, sets forth the critical principles that inform the novelist’s work. Following this introduction, a chronologically structured account of the novels and short stories traces Byatt’s literary development. As well as exploring the ways in which Byatt has successfully negotiated a path between twentieth-century realism and postmodern experiment, Campbell employs a critical perspective appropriate to the author’s individualistic feminist stance, stressing the breadth of Byatt’s intellectual concerns and her insistence on placing her female characters in a living, changing context of ideas and experience, especially in their search for creative voice.