Imagination
Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes. Imagination helps apply knowledge to solve problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.
Imagination is the process of developing theories and ideas based on the functioning of the mind through a creative division. Drawing from actual perceptions, imagination employs intricate conditional processes that engage both semantic and episodic memory to generate new or refined ideas. This part of the mind helps develop better and easier ways to accomplish tasks, whether old or new.
A way to train imagination is by listening to and practicing storytelling, wherein imagination is expressed through stories and writings such as fairy tales, fantasies, and science fiction. When children develop their imagination, they often exercise it through pretend play. They use role-playing to act out what they have imagined, and followingly, they play on by acting as if their make-believe scenarios are actual reality.
Etymology
The English word "imagination" originates from the Latin term "imaginatio," which is the standard Latin translation of the Greek term "φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ". The Latin term also translates to "mental image" or "fancy." The use of the word "imagination" in English can be traced back to the mid-14th century, referring to a faculty of the mind that forms and manipulates images.Definition
In modern philosophical understanding, imagination is commonly seen as a faculty for creating mental images and for making non-rational, associative transitions among these images.One view of imagination links it to cognition, suggesting that imagination is a cognitive process in mental functioning. It is also associated with rational thinking in a way that both imaginative and rational thoughts involve the cognitive process that "underpins thinking about possibilities". However, imagination is not considered to be purely a cognitive activity because it is also linked to the body and place. It involves setting up relationships with materials and people, precluding the notion that imagination is confined to the mind.
The psychological view of imagination relates this concept to a cognate term, "mental imagery," which denotes the process of reviving in the mind recollections of objects previously given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists prefer to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Constructive imagination is further divided into voluntary imagination driven by the lateral prefrontal cortex, such as mental rotation, and involuntary imagination, such as REM sleep dreaming, daydreaming, hallucinations, and spontaneous insight. In clinical settings, clinicians nowadays increasingly make use of visual imagery for psychological treatment of anxiety disorders, depression, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease.
Conceptual history
Ancient
Ancient Greek philosophers conceived imagination, or "phantasia," as working with "pictures" in the sense of mental images. Aristotle, in his work De Anima, identified imagination as a faculty that enables an image to occur within us, a definition associating imagination with a broad range of activities involved in thoughts, dreams, and memories.In Philebus, Plato discusses daydreaming and considers imagination about the future as the work of a painter within the soul. However, Plato portrayed this painter as an illustrator rather than a creator, reflecting his view of imagination as a representational rather than an inventive faculty.
Greek philosophers typically distinguished imagination from perception and rational thinking: "For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgement without it". Aristotle viewed imagination as a faculty that mediates between the senses and intellect. The mental images it manipulates, whether arising from visions, dreams or sensory perception, were thought to be transmitted through the lower parts of the soul, suggesting that these images could be influenced by emotions and primal desires, thereby confusing the judgement of the intellect.
Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, the concept of imagination encompassed domains such as religion, literature, artwork, and notably, poetry. Men of science often recognized poets as "imaginative," viewing imagination as the mental faculty that specifically permitted poetry writing. This association, they suggested, lies in the capacity of imagination for image-making and image-forming, which results in a sense of "visualizing" with "the inner eye."An epitome of this concept is Chaucer's idea of the "mind's eye" in The Man of Law's Tale from The Canterbury Tales. He described a man who, although blind, was able to "see" with an "eye of his mind":
"That oon of hem was blynd and myghte not see, / But it were with thilke eyen of his mynde / With whiche men seen, after that they ben blynde."Medieval theories of faculty psychology posited imagination as a faculty of the internal senses : imagination receives mental images from memory or perception, organizes them, and transmits them to the reasoning faculties, providing the intellect with sense data. In this way, it enables the reshaping of images from sense perception, performing a filtering function of reality.
Although not attributed the capacity for creations, imagination was thought to combine images received from memory or perception in creative ways, allowing for the invention of novel concepts or expressions. For example, it could fuse images of "gold" and "mountain" to produce the idea of a "golden mountain."
In medieval artistic works, imagination served the role of combining images of perceivable things to portray legendary, mysterious, or extraordinary creatures. This can be seen in the depiction of a Mongolian in the Grandes Chroniques de France, as well as in the portrayal of angels, demons, hell, and the apocalypse in Christian religious paintings.
Renaissance and early modern
The Renaissance saw the revival of classical texts and the celebration for men's dignity, yet scholars of the time did not significantly contribute to the conceptual understanding of "imagination." Marsilio Ficino, for example, did not regard artistic creations such as painting, sculpture and poetry as privileged forms of human creativity, nor did he attribute creativity to the faculty of imagination. Instead, Ficino posited that imagination could be the vehicle through which divine intervention transmits insights in the form of images, which ultimately facilitates the creation of art.Nevertheless, the groundwork laid by humanists made it easier for later thinkers to develop the connection between imagination and creativity. Early modern philosophers began to consider imagination as a trait or ability that an individual could possess. Miguel de Cervantes, influenced by Spanish physician and philosopher Juan Huarte de San Juan, crafted the iconic character Don Quixote, who epitomized Huarte's idea of "wits full of invention." This type of wit was thought to be typically found in individuals for whom imagination was the most prominent component of their "ingenium".Early modern philosophers also started to acknowledge imagination as an active, cognitive faculty, although it was principally seen as a mediator between sense perception and pure understanding. René Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, interpreted imagination as a faculty actively focusing on bodies while being passively dependent on stimuli from different senses. In the writing of Thomas Hobbes, imagination became a key element of human cognition.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the connotations of imagination" extended to many areas of early modern civic life. Juan Luis Vives noted the connection between imagination and rhetoric skills. Huarte extended this idea, linking imagination to any disciplines that necessitates "figures, correspondence, harmony, and proportion," such as medical practice and the art of warfare. Additionally, Galileo used the concept of imagination to conduct thought experiments, such as asking readers to imagine the direction a stone released from a sling would fly.
Enlightenment and thereafter
By the Age of Enlightenment, philosophical discussions frequently linked the power of imagination with creativity, particularly in aesthetics. William Duff was among the first to identify imagination as a quality of genius, distinguishing it from talent by emphasizing that only genius is characterized by creative innovation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge distinguished between imagination expressing realities of an imaginal realm above our mundane personal existence, and "fancy", or fantasy, which represents the creativity of the artistic soul. In Preliminary Discourse ''to the Encyclopedia of Diderot, d'Alembert referred to imagination as the creative force for Fine Arts.Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason'', viewed imagination as a faculty of intuition, capable of making "presentations," i.e., sensible representations of objects that are not directly present. Kant distinguished two forms of imagination: productive and reproductive. Productive imagination functions as the original source of the presentation of an object, thus preceding experience; while reproductive imagination generates presentations derived from past experiences, recalling empirical intuitions it previously had. Kant's treatise linked imagination to cognition, perception, aesthetic judgement, artistic creation, and morality.
The Kantian idea prepared the way for Fichte, Schelling and the Romantics to transform the philosophical understanding of it into an authentic creative force, associated with genius, inventive activity, and freedom. In the work of Hegel, imagination, though not given as much importance as by his predecessors, served as a starting point for the defense of Hegelian phenomenology. Hegel distinguished between a phenomenological account of imagination, which focuses on the lived experience and consciousness, and a scientific, speculative account, which seeks to understand the nature and function of imagination in a systematic and theoretical manner.