imagination

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American Heritage Dictionary:

i·mag·i·na·tion

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(ĭ-măj'ə-nā'shən) pronunciation
n.
    1. The formation of a mental image of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses.
    2. The mental image so formed.
    3. The ability or tendency to form such images.
  1. The ability to confront and deal with reality by using the creative power of the mind; resourcefulness: handled the problems with great imagination.
  2. A traditional or widely held belief or opinion.
  3. Archaic.
    1. An unrealistic idea or notion; a fancy.
    2. A plan or scheme.
imaginational i·mag'i·na'tion·al adj.

SYNONYMS   imagination, fancy, fantasy. These nouns refer to the power of the mind to form images, especially of what is not present to the senses. Imagination is the most broadly applicable: "In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature" (Wallace Stevens). Fancy especially suggests mental invention that is whimsical, capricious, or playful and that is characteristically well removed from reality: "All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity" (Samuel Johnson). Fantasy is applied principally to elaborate or extravagant fancy as a product of the imagination given free rein: "The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy" (Lionel Trilling).


Roget's Thesaurus:

imagination

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noun

    The power of the mind to form images: fancy, fantasy, imaginativeness. See real/imaginary, thoughts.

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n

Definition: power to create in one's mind
Antonyms: being, entity, existence, material, reality, substance, truth

imagination, the mind's capacity to generate images of objects, states, or actions that have not been felt or experienced by the senses. In the discussion of psychology and art prior to Romanticism, imagination was usually synonymous with fancy, and commonly opposed to the faculty of reason, either as complementary to it or as contrary to it. S. T. Coleridge's famous distinction between fancy and imagination in his Biographia Literaria (1817) emphasized the imagination's vitally creative power of dissolving and uniting images into new forms, and of reconciling opposed qualities into a new unity. This freely creative and transforming power of the imagination was a central principle of Romanticism.

Most directly, the faculty of reviving or especially creating images in the mind's eye. But more generally, the ability to create and rehearse possible situations, to combine knowledge in unusual ways, or to invent thought experiments. Coleridge was the first aesthetic theorist to distinguish the possibility of disciplined, creative use of the imagination, as opposed to the idle play of fancy. Imagination is involved in any flexible rehearsal of different approaches to a problem and is wrongly thought of as opposed to reason. It also bears an interesting relation to the process of deciding whether a projected scenario is genuinely possible. We seem able to imagine ourselves having been Napoleon, and unable to imagine space being spherical, yet further reflection may lead us to think that the first supposition is impossible and the second entirely possible.

The word imagination covers a spectrum of meanings in everyday language, from the experiencing of vivid images in different modalities, to states of mind such as daydreaming, characterized by fantasy and fluidity of thought, to the generation of novel ideas and outputs. Though imagination is typically associated with artistic spheres, scientific investigation also involves intuitive 'leaps in the dark' and other hallmarks of imaginative thought. The chemist Mendeleev is reputed to have woken from a dream in which the elements of the Periodic Table were laid out as patience cards, thus solving in imagination the problem that had eluded him during many weeks of effortful reasoning.

1. Imagination and psychological theory
2. Components of imagination
3. Evolution of imagination
4. Development of imagination in children
5. Impairment of imagination
6. Imagination and mental disorder
7. Imagination and the brain

1. Imagination and psychological theory

Contemporary child-rearing and educational practices stress the importance of fostering children's imagination, and in adult life a high premium is placed on activities and outputs which demonstrate imagination. Evolutionary theorists see it as a crucial feature of the cognitive apparatus which sets humans apart from other animals. Yet studies of imagination have played a comparatively small part in mainstream psychology — reflecting theoretical influences which have acted in combination to downgrade its importance. Behaviourists deemed imagination, along with consciousness and other complex attributes of mind, a meaningless construct, because it was impossible to operationalize or measure. Psychodynamic perspectives have recognized its significance, but presented it as 'primary process thinking' — a primitive, associative, non-rational form of thought linked to both dreaming and pathology. In reaction to this, cognitive psychology has either ignored imagination, or sought to explain it within the framework of conscious, logical reasoning processes — 'secondary process thinking' — which is its central subject matter. The theoretical hiatus between psychodynamic and other accounts, which obscures the probable role of both associative and logical processes (Martindale 1999), has stunted the development of a satisfactory psychology of imagination. Where the term features (for instance, in research on pretence), the imaginative content of the activity is rarely clearly defined.

The first task for a psychology of imagination is therefore to identify a configuration of characteristics which epitomize imaginative processes and distinguish them, albeit in degree, from other forms of thought.

2. Components of imagination

Mental imagery — the capacity to 'see things in the mind's eye', or indeed 'hear them in the mind's ear' — is the most obvious concomitant of imagination. If we ask someone to imagine themselves on holiday, they may report sights, smells, sounds, and tastes from an actual holiday, that is, memories of past experiences stored or accessed in the form of images (see mental imagery for a discussion of the representations involved). However, imagination is not necessarily or exclusively image based. The processes outlined below are likely to involve verbal as well as non-verbal or imaginal thinking.

Counterfactual thinking — the capacity to disengage from reality in order to think about events and experiences which have not actually occurred and might never occur — is a crucial feature of much imaginative thought. Thus the holiday which a person sees in his mind's eye may be one he has never had. Counterfactual imagining is also involved in contemplating potential courses of action, fantasy and pretence, and understanding other people's thoughts, beliefs, and desires (so-called Theory of Mind), all of which are likely to involve verbal as well as non-verbal processes.

A third characteristic of imagination is symbolic representation, the use of concepts and images to evoke or represent real-world entities, or the use of one set of real-world entities to evoke others (e.g. as when a child uses a stick as a gun in pretend play). It is hard to conceive of any form of thought which does not involve such symbolism. However, imagination appears distinctive in the quality and scope of the symbolism involved. An artist or poet may use paint on paper or words on a page to evoke imaginative ideas which transcend regular references or meanings. Mithen (1998) describes the basis for this as cognitive fluidity — the exchange of concepts between different cognitive domains, such that laws applying in one domain can be broken in another. Thus a sequence of notes may be 'heard' as a mountain stream; a child engaged in a pretend fight readily accepts that an ordinary twig 'is' a sword; an adult may believe in life after death, or that supernatural beings can travel through solid objects.

Cognitive fluidity also underpins the capacity, crucial for imagination, to operate on familiar symbolic representations generating novel ones. This manifests itself most obviously in the works of creative artists. A composer, for instance, may work with the same set of notes or harmonies to generate entirely new compositions. This raises the difficult question of how, if at all, imagination differs from creativity. According to one contemporary approach imagination is a basic and universal characteristic of human cognition, while true creativity is the attribute of an exceptional, talented minority. Thus Boden (1990) points out that, while all humans possess the imagination necessary to generate new combinations of thoughts or words, true creativity transcends such routine generativity. However, other researchers see creativity as a universal human attribute, and, as such, perhaps indistinguishable from imagination.

An alternative criterion for distinguishing imagination and creativity revolves around the production of outputs. While the act of imagining something can be an entirely personal experience, the concept of creativity is closely associated with the generation of social and cultural products such as music and works of art. Such outputs originate in the imagination of one individual, and have the power to evoke imaginative responses in others. But some recent theories emphasize that both imaginative thought and creative outputs have their sources in social interactions between individuals, once again questioning the idea that creativity is an individual and special talent. It may be soundest to adopt an intermediate position — that imagination reflects universal human processes which are particularly enhanced in those individuals or those interactions that generate creative outputs.

Finally, it seems likely that certain states of mind, accompanied by modifications in brain activity, are particularly conducive to imaginative thought. Martindale (1999) notes that the imagination-rich thinking involved in discovery, creation, and problem solving reflects distinct cognitive phases. The initial phase is typically dominated by the conscious, logical, reality-oriented reasoning referred to earlier as secondary process thinking. Following this is an 'incubation phase' — a 'fallow period' in which no apparent progress on the task is made, and the person may experience a powerful sense of frustration and block. Eventually there is an illumination, or solution, typically when the individual's mind has not been consciously 'focused' on the problem for a time. Both the incubation and illumination phases are thought to be characterized by free-associative, non-logical, or primary process thinking.

The emotional euphoria which often accompanies illumination is epitomized in the apocryphal tale of Archimedes shouting 'Eureka' as he jumped from the bath. A sustained form of euphoria, the hypomanic mood, typically preceding manic breakdown, in which many great composers and artists have been most prolific, is believed to involve atypical functioning of neurotransmitters and brain circuits (Nettle 2001). Further ideas about brain activity are considered later on.

3. Evolution of imagination

Studies within cognitive archaeology and evolutionary psychology suggest that fully fledged imagination may have emerged only in the last 100,000 years, as a unique characteristic of Homo sapiens sapiens. As much as 2 million years ago, members of the first species of the genus Homo (Homo habilis) displayed a limited capacity to 'imagine' a future outcome, in their ability to fashion stones into simple tools. Since they transported these tools to distant sources of food, these hominids could also perhaps 'see' in their mind's eye locations they had visited earlier. But these embryonic forms of imagination were practised imitatively and inflexibly for a further 1.5 million years, with only gradual changes in technological and behavioural complexity and, by implication, cognitive sophistication. According to Foley (1995), the capacity for counterfactual thinking was a later and crucial evolutionary stage, which coincided with the significant increase in hominid brain size some 300,000 years ago. A hominid capable of imagining the possible outcomes of different actions, or the possible responses of its peers, would have the selective advantage of control over its physical and social environment, uncompromised by expenditure of energy in physically enacting and evaluating alternative outcomes.

From 50,000 years ago, there was a so-called 'symbolic explosion', a proliferation of creative activity including cave art depicting scenes as much imaginary as real, and decorative artefacts, such as the 30,000-year-old Hohlenstein–Stadel statuette of a fantastic creature, half lion and half man (see Fig. 1). Since all the different elements of imagination — imagery, symbolism, counterfactual thinking, novelty, and creative output — are evident during this period, it seems plausible to locate the full flowering of modern imagination here. According to some researchers (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998), the humans of this era even understood the role of altered state of mind in promoting imagination, using trance states and hallucinogens to enhance their own powers.

However, we cannot rule out that earlier peoples engaged in rituals, told stories, or fashioned fanciful objects from materials which have perished. Moreover, since modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared approximately 150,000 years ago, the reasons for a 'watershed' in imaginative behaviour at around 50,000 years are unclear. Mithen (1998) has argued that the symbolic explosion represents the culmination of evolutionary changes occurring beyond the first appearance of humans, in which a strictly modular cognitive architecture (see cognitive modularity), adapted to deal entirely independently with domains such as the natural world, technology, and social relations, was superseded. A system of flexibly interacting modules, permitting cross-talk between different domains, might confer greater capacity not only for technological innovation, but also for anticipating future actions, and for cooperation in complex social groups, with, as a by-product, the ability to pretend that a banana is a telephone, or to create (and believe in) a mythical creature. In contrast, Foley and others have suggested that the cognitive capacity for such imagination was fully in place when the first members of Homo sapiens sapiens started to think in 'what if?' terms. Accordingly, the later 'symbolic explosion' may reflect behavioural and cultural changes, motivated by population pressures and the need to demarcate one social group from another.



Fig. 1. Imagining the impossible: a 30,000 year-old statuette of a 'lion-man'.

4. Development of imagination in children

Current theories of the development of imagination in children echo evolutionary approaches in stressing the link between imaginative thinking and advanced social and cognitive skills. Much of this work focuses on observational and experimental studies of pretence. Typically developing children display simple forms of pretence, such as using one object to represent another, from as early as 12 months. More elaborate forms of pretence unfold thereafter, in which isolated pretend acts become incorporated into complex scripts (such as making a cup of tea), and children adopt pretend roles (such as Batman or 'mothers and fathers') in social interactions. Leslie (1987) described pretence as an ontogenetically early form of meta-representation. The representation 'this is a banana' is decoupled from reality to allow acceptance of the proposition, in pretence, that 'this is a telephone'. This, he argues, 'kick starts' the general capacity for counterfactual thinking. By contrast, Harris (2000) argues that children employ pretence partly in order to learn about reality. His claim that elements of reality are imported into pretence in order to 'run through' their consequences may explain why a pretend episode such as a fight can generate genuine emotional responses. Both theories give pretence a central role in developing the child's theory of mind, and hence their capacity to enter the social world of other people.

Harris's model encompasses a wide range of childhood phenomena including imaginary companions, belief in magic, and fairy stories. His view of imagination as a sophisticated and logically coherent mode of cognition, which reinforces rather than disrupts the developing child's grasp of social and physical reality, clearly links it with the notion of secondary process thinking. As such, Harris's account provides no obvious sources for the inventive juxtapositions of startlingly disparate ideas which we may see in the work of artists and poets. A complete theory of the imagination needs to address how, if at all, the normal, well-regulated fantasy world of children pretending relates to the exceptional 'zany' imagination which we find, for instance, in surrealist paintings or James Joyce's stream of consciousness. As Martindale (1999) suggests, the capacity for creative imagination may depend upon the facility with which an individual can alternate between primary process and secondary process thought.

5. Impairment of imagination

The extensive imaginative impairments documented in people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), and the usually profound consequences for how such people engage with the human world, serve as a 'test case' for the importance of imagination in human cognition and social behaviour. Yet if imagination is such a crucial human adaptation, why should genes conferring susceptibility to a condition marked by imagination deficit persist in human populations? Baron-Cohen et al. (2002) have speculated that the presence in early human societies of some individuals with a typically autistic cognitive style, combining diminished imaginative capacity with an enhanced grasp of physical and mechanical systems, might have had certain selective advantages. These would be the individuals who, while the shamans contacted the spirit world, or dealt with social disputes among kin, and while the artists embellished cave walls, would be fulfilling other functions such as predicting the path of an oncoming storm, or building a robust dwelling.

The paucity of pretend play in children with ASDs is such a robust finding that it now forms part of a clinical tool for the early detection of autism (Baron-Cohen et al. 1996). A child with autism given a pile of toy bricks is likely to arrange them obsessively in patterns or colours, but unlikely to use them for a 'tea party' or a make-believe train. Difficulties in imagining other people's thoughts (Theory of Mind) have been extensively documented using tasks such as false belief (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985) which require an understanding that another person's belief about a situation might be different from one's own.

Of particular interest in this context are studies by Craig and colleagues. One study, based on the Torrence tests for creativity, highlighted the inability of children with ASDs to generate a range of novel interpretations for a junk object. Another (Craig, Baron-Cohen, and Scott 2001) showed that these children lack precisely the imaginative capacity which enabled our ancestors to fashion a lion man. The children were unable to produce drawings of fantastical creatures combining, say, the top half of a fish with the body and legs of a mouse. Yet their drawings of real-world creatures were unimpaired, reinforcing the notion that full-blown imagination requires not just the ability to 'see in the mind's eye', but also to manipulate and combine mental images fluently and in defiance of domain-specific constraints.

Yet any interpretation of imaginative impairments in ASDs must accommodate substantial variations in their severity across the spectrum. For instance, some people with Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism have a measure of social imagination in the form of partial Theory of Mind skills. The recent case of an autistic child with exceptional poetic and literary skills (Mukhopadhyay 2000) and the claim that geniuses such as Beckett and Wittgenstein suffered from Asperger syndrome (Glastonbury 1997) argue for a complex relationship between imaginative impairment and ASDs.

6. Imagination and mental disorder

We find a mirror image for imaginative impairment in the wild, uncontrolled imagination that accompanies mental disorders such as manic depression and psychosis. Some research (see Jamison 1993) suggests that composers and artists such as Schumann and Van Gogh have been particularly prolific during hypomania or borderline psychosis, states that precede actual breakdown, when thought and behaviour become too disorganized for creative output. The gradual onset of schizophrenic illness in the painter Louis Wain is precisely charted in his series of cat paintings, first animated and intriguing, then developing an increasingly nightmarish, demonic, and fragmented quality as the disorder took hold.

Studies of the family trees of exceptional people suggest the presence of traits which, depending on genetic loading and environmental circumstances, may be expressed as an outstanding imaginative talent, or mental disorder, or a combination of the two. Nettle (2001) concludes that the same brain processes which promote originality and mental fluidity as key components of imagination can also, depending on environmental circumstances, lead to mental disorder. Like Baron-Cohen, Nettle sets this, speculatively, in evolutionary context: genes which promote the adaptive attributes comprising exceptional imagination carry with them the cost of susceptibility to mental disorder.

Atypical functioning of brain processes and circuits is implicated both in the 'strong imagination' described by Nettle, and contrastingly, in autism, with its impairments in social and creative imagination. This returns us to the intriguing question of how imaginative processes generally are instantiated in the structure and activity of the brain.

7. Imagination and the brain

The notion that we could identify brain specific correlates for imaginary thoughts, such as that of a lion man, seems far fetched. However, both PET and fMRI studies have begun to reveal some of the areas of the brain involved in imagery, which as we saw earlier is a basic, though not universal, feature of imagination. As Damasio observes, cortical brain circuits involved in creative imagination are shaped by each individual's activities and experiences.

Of particular interest are PET studies indicating that imagining oneself involved in a particular action may activate the same areas of the brain as actually performing the action (see Robertson 2002). Moreover when such imaginary movements are mentally practised repeatedly, the relevant motor areas of the brain exhibit sustained changes similar to those which occur when the movements are practised physically. This fascinating finding explains the efficacy of the 'mind game', the technique of imaginary practice used by many top sports people and musicians.

Similar results occur in visual imagery tasks. When a participant is asked to imagine a particular object, the primary visual cortex is activated, as it would be on actually viewing such an object. However, when a person mentally accesses familiar images — whether of movements or objects — he or she must also be using those brain regions where the relevant memories are laid down. This is effectively highlighted in a study by Maguire, Frackowiack, and Frith (1997). London taxi drivers, famed for completing 'the knowledge' — the intensive training in negotiating the highways and byways of London — were PET scanned while imagining the routes they would take to familiar locations. The scans indicated intense activity in the right hippocampus, where, it seems, the spatial memories of the routes had been laid down.

Studies of the brain activity involved in imagining familiar objects or routine movements unfortunately tell us little about what brain activity underpins more complex forms of imagination. What happens, for instance, when we think about an event which has never occurred, pretend to be a train, or create an entirely novel object in the mind's eye? The relevant experiments have never been done. However, as many researchers have noted, such activities require mental fluidity — the combination and transformation of images or thoughts from the same or different domains. Damasio may therefore be correct in proposing a key role for the frontal lobes, which are involved in organizing and coordinating information from different parts of the brain. Yet frontal lobe activity also operates to inhibit 'irrelevant' thoughts and actions. Since this could potentially suppress precisely those eccentric connections that mark creative imagination, perhaps imaginative thought involves, at different phases, both upward and downward modulation of frontal lobe activity. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies (see Martindale 1999) support the idea that fluctuating levels of cortical (and particularly frontal) arousal are related to imaginative thought.

Studies of the relation of brain activity to imaginative thought are clearly in their infancy, but one final study merits inclusion here. Gruzelier et al. (2002) have made EEG recordings of brain activity during a controlled trial of biofeedback training designed to enhance the imaginative performance of musicians. The performance of young musicians at the Royal College of Music was evaluated before and after they had learned to control their own brain rhythms. The learned capacity to evoke theta-wave activity over other frequencies was found to be correlated with the musicians' imaginative involvement in their performance, as evaluated by independent experts. The idea that brain activity might eventually be harnessed to enhance imaginative thought provides a suitably optimistic conclusion to this discussion.

(Published 2004)

— Ilona Roth

    Bibliography
  • Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., and Frith, U. (1985). 'Does the autistic child have a theory of mind?' Cognition, 21.
  • — —  Cox, A., Baird, G., et al. (1996). 'Psychological markers in the detection of autism in infancy in a large population'. British Journal of Psychiatry, 168.
  • — —  Wheelwright, S., Lawson, J., Griffin, R., and Hill, J. (2002). 'The exact mind: empathising and systemising in autism spectrum conditions'. In Goswami, U. (ed.), Handbook of Cognitive Development.
  • Boden, M. (1990). The Creative Mind.
  • Clottes, J., and Lewis-Williams, D. (1998). The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves.
  • Craig, J., Baron-Cohen, S., and Scott, F. (2001). 'Drawing ability in autism: a window into imagination'. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences, 38.
  • Damasio, A. R. (2001). 'Some notes on imagination and creativity'. In Pfenninger, K. H., and Shubik, V., The Origins of Creativity.
  • Foley, R. (1995). Humans before Humanity.
  • Glastonbury, M. (1997). 'I'll teach you differences: on the cultural presence of autistic lives', Changing English, 4.
  • Gruzelier, J. H., Egner, T., Valentine, E., and Williamson, A. (2002). 'Comparing learned EEG self-regulation and the Alexander technique as a means of enhancing musical performance'. In Stevens, C. et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Sydney 2002.
  • Harris, P. L. (2000). The Work of the Imagination.
  • Jamison, K. R. (1993). Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.
  • Leslie, A. M. (1987). 'Pretense and representation: the origins of "theory of mind" '. Psychological Review, 94.
  • Maguire, E. A., Frackowiack, R. S. J., and Frith., C. D. (1997). 'Recalling routes around London: activation of the right hippocampus in taxi drivers'. Journal of Neuroscience, 17.
  • Martindale, C. (1999). 'Biological bases of creativity'. In Sternberg, R. J. (ed.), Handbook of Creativity.
  • Mithen, S. (1998). 'A creative explosion? Theory of Mind, language, and the disembodied mind of the Upper Palaeolithic'. In Mithen, S. (ed.), Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory.
  • Mukhopadhyay, T. (2000). Beyond the Silence: My Life, the World and Autism.
  • Nettle, D. (2001). Strong Imagination.
  • Robertson, I. (2002). The Mind's Eye.


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A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce


n.

A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.


Word Tutor:

imagination

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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - The forming of a mental picture of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses; The ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems; The ability to form mental pictures of things or events.

pronunciation Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein

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sign description: Both I-hands make outward motions off the forehead in a repeated motion.




Quotes About:

Imagination

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Quotes:

"The Chinese pianist Liu Chi Kung was imprisoned for seven years during the Cultural Revolution, during which time he had no access to a piano. When he returned to giving concerts again after he was released, his playing was better than ever. Asked how this was possible since he had not practice for seven years, he replied: I did practice, every day. I rehearsed every piece I had ever played, note by note, in my mind." - Bernie Zilbergeld

"First have being in your mind. Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality. The genius is he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to be." - Peter Nivio Zarlenga

"An idea is salvation by imagination." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"What you see is what you get." - Flip Wilson

"Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is." - Oscar Wilde

"Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our life." - Simone Weil

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Olin Levi Warner, Imagination (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming images and sensations when they are not perceived through sight, hearing, or other senses. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental faculty through which people make sense of the world,[1][2][3] and it also plays a key role in the learning process.[1][4] A basic training for imagination is listening to storytelling (narrative),[1][5] in which the exactness of the chosen words is the fundamental factor to "evoke worlds."[6] It is a whole cycle of image formation or any sensation which may be described as "hidden" as it takes place without anyone else's knowledge.The research has suggested that about 60% of people are imaginative. A person may imagine according to his mood, it may be good or bad depending on the situation. Some people imagine in a state of tension or gloominess in order to calm themselves. It is accepted as the innate ability and process of inventing partial or complete personal realms within the mind from elements derived from sense perceptions of the shared world.[citation needed] The term is technically used in psychology for the process of reviving in the mind, percepts of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Imagined images are seen with the "mind's eye."

Imagination can also be expressed through stories such as fairy tales or fantasies. Most famous inventions or entertainment products were developed from the inspiration of someone's imagination.

Children often use narratives or pretend play in order to exercise their imagination. When children develop fantasy they play at two levels: first, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play again with their make-believe situation by acting as if what they have developed is an actual reality that already exists in narrative myth.[7]

Contents

Description

"Imagination is an effort of the mind to develop a discourse that had previously been known, a development of a concept of what is already there by the help of our reason, to develop a results of new thinking."[citation needed] The common use of the term is for the process of forming new images in the mind that have not been previously experienced with the help of what has been seen, heard, or felt before, or at least only partially or in different combinations. Some typical examples follow:

Imagination in this sense, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity, is, up to a certain point, free from objective restraints. The ability to imagine one's self in another person's place is very important to social relations and understanding. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination ... is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."[8]

But in reality, without knowledge, imagination can not be developed.

In various spheres, however, even imagination is in practice limited: thus a person whose imaginations do violence to the elementary laws of thought, or to the necessary principles of practical possibility, or to the reasonable probabilities of a given case is regarded as insane.

The same limitations beset imagination in the field of scientific hypothesis. Progress in scientific research is due largely to provisional explanations which are developed by imagination, but such hypotheses must be framed in relation to previously ascertained facts and in accordance with the principles of the particular science.

Imagination is an experimental partition of the mind used to develop theories and ideas based on functions. Taking objects from real perceptions, the imagination uses complex IF-functions to develop new or revised ideas. This part of the mind is vital to developing better and easier ways to accomplish old and new tasks. These experimental ideas can be safely conducted inside a virtual world and then, if the idea is probable and the function is true, the idea can be actualized in reality. Imagination is the key to new development of the mind and can be shared with others, progressing collectively.

Regarding the volunteer effort, imagination can be classified as:

  • voluntary (the dream from the sleep, the daydream)
  • involuntary (the reproductive imagination, the creative imagination, the dream of perspective)

Psychology of imagination

Psychologists have studied imaginative thought, not only in its exotic form of creativity and artistic expression but also in its mundane form of everyday imagination.[9] Ruth M.J. Byrne has proposed that everyday imaginative thoughts about counterfactual alternatives to reality may be based on the same cognitive processes that rational thoughts are based on.[10] Children can engage in the creation of imaginative alternatives to reality from their very early years.[11]

Imagination and Memory

Memory and imagination have been shown to be affected by one another, found through research in Priscilla Long's piece My Brain On My Mind "Images made by functional magnetic resonance imaging technology show that remembering and imagining sends blood to identical parts of the brain."[12] An optimal balance of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane form of information processing can heighten the chance of the brain to retain information as long term memories, rather than short term, memories. This is significant because experiences stored as long term memories are easier to be recalled, as they are ingrained deeper in the mind. Each of these forms require information to be taught in a specific manner so as to use various regions of the brain when being processed.[13] This information can potentially help develop programs for young students to cultivate or further enhance their creative abilities from a young age. The Neocortex and Thalamus are responsible for controlling the brain's imagination, along with many of the brain's other functions such as consciousness and abstract thought.[14] Since imagination involves many different brain functions, such as emotions, memory, thoughts etc., portions of the brain where multiple functions occur-- such as the Thalamus and Neocortex-- are the main regions where imaginative processing has been documented.[15] The understanding of how memory and imagination are linked in the brain, paves the way to better understand one's ability to link significant past experiences with their imagination.

Imagination and perception

From the work of Piaget it is known that perceptions depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination. Piaget cites the example of a child saying that the moon is following her when she walks around the village at night. Like this, perceptions are integrated into the world view to make sense. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions.[16]

Imagination vs. belief

Imagination differs fundamentally from belief because the subject understands that what is personally invented by the mind does not necessarily affect the course of action taken in the apparently shared world, while beliefs are part of what one holds as truths about both the shared and personal worlds. The play of imagination, apart from the obvious limitations (e.g. of avoiding explicit self-contradiction), is conditioned only by the general trend of the mind at a given moment. Belief, on the other hand, is immediately related to practical activity: it is perfectly possible to imagine oneself a millionaire, but unless one believes it one does not, therefore, act as such. Belief endeavors to conform to the subject's experienced conditions or faith in the possibility of those conditions; whereas imagination as such is specifically free. The dividing line between imagination and belief varies widely in different stages of technological development. Thus in more extreme cases, someone from a primitive culture who ill frames an ideal reconstruction of the causes of his illness, and attributes it to the hostile magic of an enemy based on faith and tradition rather than science. In ignorance of the science of pathology the subject is satisfied with this explanation, and actually believes in it, sometimes to the point of death, due to what is known as the nocebo effect.

It follows that the learned distinction between imagination and belief depends in practice on religion, tradition, and culture.

Imagination as a reality

The world as experienced is an interpretation of data arriving from the senses; as such, it is perceived as real by contrast to most thoughts and imaginings. Users of hallucinogenic drugs are said to have a heightened imagination. This difference is only one of degree and can be altered by several historic causes, namely changes to brain chemistry, hypnosis or other altered states of consciousness, meditation, many hallucinogenic drugs, and electricity applied directly to specific parts of the brain. The difference between imagined and perceived reality can be proven by psychosis. Many mental illnesses can be attributed to this inability to distinguish between the sensed and the internally created worlds. Some cultures and traditions even view the apparently shared world as an illusion of the mind as with the Buddhist maya, or go to the opposite extreme and accept the imagined and dreamed realms as of equal validity to the apparently shared world as the Australian Aborigines do with their concept of dreamtime.

Imagination, because of having freedom from external limitations, can often become a source of real pleasure and unnecessary suffering. Consistent with this idea, imagining pleasurable and fearful events is found to engage emotional circuits involved in emotional perception and experience.[17] A person of vivid imagination often suffers acutely from the imagined perils besetting friends, relatives, or even strangers such as celebrities. Also crippling fear can result from taking an imagined painful future too seriously.

Imagination can also produce some symptoms of real illnesses. In some cases, they can seem so "real" that specific physical manifestations occur such as rashes and bruises appearing on the skin, as though imagination had passed into belief or the events imagined were actually in progress. See, for example, psychosomatic illness and folie a deux.

It has also been proposed that the whole of human cognition is based upon imagination. That is, nothing that is perceived is purely observation but all is a morph between sense and imagination.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Norman 2000 pp. 1-2
  2. ^ Brian Sutton-Smith 1988, p. 22
  3. ^ Archibald MacLeish 1970, p. 887
  4. ^ Kieran Egan 1992, pp. 50
  5. ^ Northrop Frye 1963, p. 49
  6. ^ As noted by Giovanni Pascoli
  7. ^ Laurence Goldman (1998). Child's play: myth, mimesis and make-believe. Basically what this means is that the children use their make-believe situation and act as if what they are acting out is from a reality that already exists even though they have made it up.. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1-85973-918-0. 
  8. ^ Viereck, George Sylvester (October 26, 1929). "What life means to Einstein: an interview". The Saturday Evening Post. 
  9. ^ Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M, & Vaid, J. (1997). Creative thought. Washington DC: APA
  10. ^ Byrne, R.M.J. (2005). The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  11. ^ Harris, P. (2000). The work of the imagination. London: Blackwell.
  12. ^ My Brain On My Mind p.27
  13. ^ Leahy, Wayne; John Sweller (5). "The Imagination Effect Increases with an Increased Intrinsic Cognitive Load". Applied Cognitive Psychology 22: 275. 
  14. ^ "Welcome to Brain Health and Puzzles!". http://www.brainhealthandpuzzles.com/brain_parts_function.html. Retrieved 3/05/2011. 
  15. ^ "Welcome to ScienceForums.Net!". http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/33986-what-part-of-the-brain-handles-imagination-answered/. 
  16. ^ Piaget, J. (1967). The child's conception of the world. (J. & A. Tomlinson, Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. BF721 .P5 1967X
  17. ^ Costa, VD, Lang, PJ, Sabatinelli, D, Bradley MM, and Versace, F (2010). "Emotional imagery: Assessing pleasure and arousal in the brain's reward circuitry". Human Brain Mapping 31 (9): 1446–1457. doi:10.1002/hbm.20948. PMID 20127869. 

References

  • Byrne, R.M.J. (2005). The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  • Egan, Kieran (1992). Imagination in Teaching and Learning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Frye, N. (1963). The Educated Imagination. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
  • Norman, Ron (2000) Cultivating Imagination in Adult Education Proceedings of the 41st Annual Adult Education Research.
  • Sutton-Smith, Brian. (1988). In Search of the Imagination. In K. Egan and D. Nadaner (Eds.), Imagination and Education. New York, Teachers College Press.
  • Fabiani, Paolo "The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche". F.U.P. (Florence UP), English edition 2009. PDF

See also:

  • Alice in wonderland
  • Watkins, Mary: "Waking Dreams" [Harper Colophon Books, 1976] and "Invisible Guests - The Development of Imaginal Dialogues" [The Analytic Press, 1986]
  • Moss, Robert: "The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination" [New World Library, September 10, 2007]

Two philosophers for whom imagination is a central concept are John Sallis and Richard Kearney. See in particular:

  • John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000)
  • John Sallis, Spacings-Of Reason and Imagination. In Texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel (1987)
  • Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (1988); 1st Paperback Edition- (ISBN 0-8166-1714-7)
  • Richard Kearney, "Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern." Fordham University Press (1998)

See also

External links



Translations:

Imagination

Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - fantasi, indbildning, forestilling

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    fange ens opmærksomhed
  • stretch one's imagination    med fantasiens hjælp, med lidt god vilje

Nederlands (Dutch)
fantasie, verbeel- ding (skracht) tot de verbeelding spreken stof tot nadenken geven

Français (French)
n. - imagination

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    captiver l'imagination de qn
  • stretch one's imagination    faire un effort d'imagination

Deutsch (German)
n. - Phantasie

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    jmds. Interesse fesseln
  • stretch one's imagination    viel Phantasie aufbringen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - φαντασία

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    εξάπτω τη φαντασία
  • stretch one's imagination    βάζω τη φαντασία μου να δουλέψει

Italiano (Italian)
immaginazione

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    catturare l'immaginazione di
  • stretch one's imagination    forzare la fantasia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - imaginação (f)

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    atrair o interesse
  • stretch one's imagination    forçar a imaginação

Русский (Russian)
воображение

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    пленить чье-то воображение
  • stretch one's imagination    заходить далеко в своем воображении

Español (Spanish)
n. - imaginación, fantasía, inventiva

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    captar el interés de uno
  • stretch one's imagination    esforzar la imaginación

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fantasi, inbillning

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
想像力, 空想, 创造力, 妄想

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    使...为之神往
  • stretch one's imagination    发挥...想像力

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 想像力, 空想, 創造力, 妄想

idioms:

  • capture one's imagination    使...為之神往
  • stretch one's imagination    發揮...想像力

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 상상, 마음, 상상의 산물

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 想像, 想像力, 創作力, 心, 想像の所産, 空想

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تخيل, خيال يستحوذ على مخيلته يسرح بخياله بعيدا‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דמיון, כוח היצירה של המוח‬


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Cornwall, Barry (Quotes By)
Wray, Fay (Quotes By)
Diaphane (parapsychology)