Imagination

Constraints

To understand the imagination one needs to experience the imagination. Thus, this entry begins with a thought experiment. Ask a reader to imagine, for an instant, an animal that lives on a distant planet—a planet with an atmosphere, a day and a night, water, and vegetation. What does it look like? Is it unique? Is it unusual? Is it conceivable? Most likely, the creature of the reader's imagination is rooted in some experience the reader has had (a real animal or a movie creature) along with some standard modifications (fangs, extra limbs, etc.). Perhaps it is a giant winged lizard with horns and colorful stripes or a horse-like creature with a lion's mane and three tails. Regardless of the animal imagined, however, some things are likely true. Although it may be unique and unusual, it will likely have some even number of limbs, or wings, or both. It will propel itself by walking or flying or swimming. In essence, it will be recognizable as an animal. This is because when people imagine, they reach out from where they are, not blindly or randomly, but along conceivable trajectories. That is, the reader builds his or her animal from a repertoire of features and characteristics of things that are animal-like. The combinations and permutations of such features allows for endless possibilities of animals that one can conceive, but they will all be animal-like. Thus, although human imagination may be limitless, it is not unbounded. This is not to say that the imagination can be reduced to a variation on a theme—a twisting of some recalled experience. What is explored in this thought experiment is meant to be a description of the imagination in action, rather than a prescription for action. When people imagine, they are constrained by what they can conceive. This constraint is real and undeniable. It limits and guides imagination, but the imagination is still free to seek unique and unusual possibilities within these bounds. To reduce this process to a prescription of intentionally making a slight variation to an old idea—a blue cow, a stripped giraffe, and so forth—is an oversimplification of the imagination, at best. The imagination is constrained by the conceivable, not controlled by it. To be otherwise reduces the imagination to the mundane and the predictable. Although there are constraints and intentionality exercised over it, the imagination still possesses a quality of autonomy to it. It is the mechanism that allows people to construct the unique and the unusual, as well as the implausible and the impossible.

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