Luca Tateo is professor of Theory, Epistemology and Methodology of Qualitative Research at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is co-editor in chief of the Journal Human Arenas. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Psychology, Culture, and Meaning, Springer, and Editor in Chief of the book series “Innovations in Qualitative Research”.
A post by Luca Tateo
The multiplication of “imaginations” in current social and human sciences leads to a logical conclusion: imagining is a ubiquitous human act. Sociological imagination, ecological imagination, philosophical imagination, scientific imagination, musical imagination, etc.: the infinite list of new imaginations pairs along with the infinite multiplication of “intelligences” in psychology – emotional; spatial; mathematical; logical; visual; musical; you name it (Gardner, 2003). The result is to have a concept, prefixed by an adjective, which creates nothing but an umpteenth disciplinary boundary so that one can say, “I work in ecological imagination” and probably have a new journal with the same name. This will lead nowhere in advancing our understanding of imagination.
It may be time to rethink imagination as a higher mental function that is implied in all human activities. My long-term research project, culminated in the volume A Theory of Imagining, Knowing, and Understanding (Tateo, 2020), aimed exactly at rethinking the way we consider imagination and at developing a theory of imaginative work as a higher mental function. In other words, I propose to develop a unified theory of imagining.
1. The pathway to imagination
So far, the different conceptions of imagination stress its alterity with respect to reality and, somehow, to rationality (Lapoujade, 2014). Alterity in both spatial and temporal terms, imagination is something in between the senses and the intellect (Sepper, 2013). A leap out of reality, it is distinguished from states of altered consciousness like dreaming, although they share some elements such as the predominantly visual feature. In the history of human thinking, imagination has always had a strange ambivalent fascination. From Aristotle to Avicenna, from Augustine to Descartes, the disquieting un-decidability of the nature of imaginative products (were they divine or diabolic in their origin; phantasmatic or empirical in their nature; could they be contagious or not, etc.) gave imagination a lower status among the products of thought. The pre-romantic - by Giambattista Vico - and romantic re-appreciation of imagination (Tateo, 2017a) gave it a mystical flavor of uncanny but also a new potential epistemic function for what I call empirical and empathic epistemologies (Tateo, 2020): imagining can potentially be a form of knowing.
Indeed, if we look at the history of science (Tateo, 2020), imaginative work is implied in all the phases of the knowledge creation, from ideation of hypotheses to development of methods, to the interpretation of data. Imagining is a purposeful action, accomplished in function of a future-oriented goal and it moves the edge of experience toward the future, generating new conditions that lead to the emergence of new goals, etc. A number of accounts exist about the role of imaginative work in the scientific process (Da Vinci, Newton, Goethe, Kekulè, van’t Hoff, Einstein, Hawking, etc.). They show how imagination is purposefully used as a whole with other mental functions, through cultural mediation. Imagination is also used in science to make sense of what happens, what happened, and what will, should, or must happen: in other words, imaginative work supports the production of judgments and plans about past, present, and future. I am here stressing the feature of complementarity rather than alterity, something that already Hume envisaged with its thought-experiment of the shades of blue (Tateo, 2020).
2. Imagining as higher mental function
All the examples I present in the book (Tateo, 2020) lead to a similar conclusion: imagining is not an alternative to reality and rationality or a diminished form of it. Imagining is a complementary form in our ways of knowing. Hence, I propose two ideas that can lead to a unified theory of imagining.
First, the focus on imaginative work as a higher mental function. That is, something always at work with the whole of other mental functions in the elaboration of symbolic meaning. This implies that we can study the socio-biological genesis, the development and the functioning of imagination as we study language, thinking, learning, emotions, etc. A unified theory of imagining would thus study:
its historical and cultural forms;
its ontogenesis and sociogenesis;
its culturally situated practices and tools in sciences;
its relation with other higher mental functions (e.g. memory, reflection, problem solving, etc.) and with non-imaginative processes;
its cognitive, affective and ethical dimensions;
a pedagogical program to educate imagination as we do with other mental functions such as language or problem solving.
Second, imaginative work is not just a loop out of reality, an incident that sometimes comes to enrich (or to interfere) the rational thinking. Imagining is a necessary though not sufficient condition for knowing. Imaginative and non-imaginative work feed into each other (figure 1).
Figure 1
Considering imaginative and non-imaginative work as a complementary epistemic pair opens up a completely new field of theoretical and empirical research in epistemology. A number of new questions arise: is imaginative work relevant only in the “context of discovery” or also in the “context of justification”? Can we consider imagining as one of the epistemic virtues? Is imagination at work only in the generation of hypotheses or also in their falsification? What are the relationships between imagining, knowing and understanding? Can we relate imagining to multiple epistemologies, epistemic injustice and to decolonizing studies (Pieterse & Parekh, 1995)?
3. Expansive imagination
We will probably agree on the fact that imagining has a generative feature. Yet, can be a bit more controversial to say that imagining also has a regulative feature such as in the role of aesthetic experiences to inhibit some undesired conducts (Tateo, 2020). For instance, all forms of organized religious cults basically contain an aesthetic component aimed at promoting desired conducts while inhibiting undesired ones. Besides, imagining has an intersubjective and inter-objective feature. The proleptic movement that allows us to grasp the irreducible otherness of another human or non–human being requires essentially an imaginative work. I am not only referring to the well known link between imagination and empathy. This is a superficial acknowledgment of a crucial feature. I refer to the fact that intersubjectivity is impossible without a mutual feeding of imaginative and non-imaginative work. In order to dialogue and mutually attune, predict and regulate, I must be able to imagine the other imagining me, which are able to imagine the other, and so on.
Thus, we can imagine the complementary work of imaginative and non-imaginative activity feeding into each other in cycles of expansive and regulative movements. Imagining can be constructive and destructive; can be pangenetic and pandemic (Tateo, 2017b; Wróbel, 2019). For sure, we will need imaginative work to the extent that post-reality and post-truth are systematically jeopardizing our generative capability by flattening everything down to an unimaginative collective hallucination. At the same time, we need the proleptic feature of imagining in order to grasp our position in the global ecosystem. For millennia, we have tried to cut out our exceptionality and raise above “nature” and now we need an enormous imaginative effort to regain our place within “nature”. Better, we need an enormous proleptic effort to understand that there is no “nature” as such distinct from humans.
In conclusion, talking of imagination as a product has only led to the multiplication of definitions and to an empty signifier (imagination) that, on the one hand can be filled with any possible theoretical nuance (Sepper, 2013). The only possible alternative, as often happens, is to use the term “imagination” in different contexts without clearly defining it, only apparently speaking of the same concept.
I am advocating for the development of a unified theory of imagining. I personally tend to think about it as a higher mental function among the others. I have of course no conclusive argument on it. It can also be put in a different way: imagining can be understood as a modality of experiencing. In this case, we could have imaginative and non-imaginative modes of thinking, reasoning, speaking, etc. In both cases, we need to have a systemic theory in order to fully grasp the epistemic role of imagining.
References
Gardner, H. (2003). Multiple intelligences after twenty years. American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois, 21, 1-15.
Lapoujade, M. N. (2014). Homo Imaginans Vol. I. México: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
Pieterse, J. N. & Parekh, B. C. (eds.) (1995). The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power. London: Zed Books.
Sepper, D. L. (2013). Understanding Imagination. Dordrecht: Springer.
Tateo, L. (2017a). Giambattista Vico and the new psychological science. Routledge.
Tateo, L. (2017b). Poetic destroyers. Vico, Emerson and the aesthetic dimension of experiencing. Culture & Psychology, 23(3), 337-355.
Tateo, L. (2020). A theory of imagining, knowing, and understanding. Springer Nature.
Wróbel, S. (2019). The gaze of death or modern adventures of the imagination in three acts. In Intelligence, Creativity and Fantasy (pp. 369-375). CRC Press.