The Evolution Of Imagination

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The Evolution of Imagination

Author : Stephen T. Asma
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022622516X
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Imagination by : Stephen T. Asma

Download or read book The Evolution of Imagination written by Stephen T. Asma and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or think of a comedy troupe riffing on a couple of cues from the audience until the whole room is erupting with laughter. Or maybe it’s a team of software engineers brainstorming their way to the next Google, or the Einsteins of the world code-cracking the mysteries of nature. Maybe it’s simply a child playing with her toys. What do all of these activities share? With wisdom, humor, and joy, philosopher Stephen T. Asma answers that question in this book: imagination. And from there he takes us on an extraordinary tour of the human creative spirit. Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our flourishing: possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand scale: as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds.

Paleopoetics

Author : Christopher Collins
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231531028
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Paleopoetics by : Christopher Collins

Download or read book Paleopoetics written by Christopher Collins and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of research traversing evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and literary study. Paleopoetics maps the selective processes that originally shaped the human genus millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play, imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as mediated by language. A manifestation of the "cognitive turn" in the humanities, Paleopoetics calls for a broader, more integrated interpretation of the reading experience, one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of thought production still resonating within us. Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.

The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination

Author : Marjorie Taylor
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199909199
Total Pages : 608 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination by : Marjorie Taylor

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination written by Marjorie Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children are widely celebrated for their imaginations, but developmental research on this topic has often been fragmented or narrowly focused on fantasy. However, there is growing appreciation for the role that imagination plays in cognitive and emotional development, as well as its link with children's understanding of the real world. With their imaginations, children mentally transcend time, place, and/or circumstance to think about what might have been, plan and anticipate the future, create fictional relationships and worlds, and consider alternatives to the actual experiences of their lives. The Oxford Handbook of the Development of Imagination provides a comprehensive overview of this broad new perspective by bringing together leading researchers whose findings are moving the study of imagination from the margins of mainstream psychology to a central role in current efforts to understand human thought. The topics covered include fantasy-reality distinctions, pretend play, magical thinking, narrative, anthropomorphism, counterfactual reasoning, mental time travel, creativity, paracosms, imaginary companions, imagination in non-human animals, the evolution of imagination, autism, dissociation, and the capacity to derive real life resilience from imaginative experiences. Many of the chapters include discussions of the educational, clinical, and legal implications of the research findings and special attention is given to suggestions for future research.

Shaping Humanity

Author : John Gurche
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300182023
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Shaping Humanity by : John Gurche

Download or read book Shaping Humanity written by John Gurche and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the process by which the author uses knowledge of fossil discoveries and comparative ape and human anatomy to create forensically accurate representations of human beings' ancient ancestors.

The Creative Imagination

Author : James Engell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780674333246
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (332 download)

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Book Synopsis The Creative Imagination by : James Engell

Download or read book The Creative Imagination written by James Engell and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination

Author : Anna Abraham
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108429246
Total Pages : 865 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination by : Anna Abraham

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination written by Anna Abraham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 865 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reﬂects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the ﬁeld is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly deﬁnes us as a species.

The Early Evolutionary Imagination

Author : Emelie Jonsson
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030827380
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis The Early Evolutionary Imagination by : Emelie Jonsson

Download or read book The Early Evolutionary Imagination written by Emelie Jonsson and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanity’s place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has pushed our capacity for storytelling into overdrive, sparking fairy tales, adventure stories, political allegories, utopias, dystopias, social realist novels, and existential meditations. Though this influence on literature has been widely studied, it has not been explained psychologically. This book argues for the adaptive function of storytelling, integrates traditional humanist scholarship with current knowledge about the evolved and adapted human mind, and calls for literary scholars to reframe their interpretation of the first authors who responded to Darwin.

Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature

Author : Jessica Straley
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107127521
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature by : Jessica Straley

Download or read book Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature written by Jessica Straley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary study that explores the impact of evolutionary theory on Victorian children's literature.

A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization

Author : Robert Lake
Publisher : IAP
ISBN 13 : 1623962676
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (239 download)

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Book Synopsis A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization by : Robert Lake

Download or read book A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization written by Robert Lake and published by IAP. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization In A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization: An Imaginative Dialogue with Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire, a volume in Landscapes of Education [Series Editors: William H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago & Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University], Robert Lake explores with the reader what is meant by imagination in the work of Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire and their relevance in an era of increasingly standardized and highly scripted practices in the field of education. The author explores how imagination permeates every aspect of life with the intent to develop capacity with the readers to look beyond the taken-for-granted, to question the normal, to develop various ways of knowing, seeing, feeling, and to imagine and act upon possibilities for positive social and educational change. The principal aspect of the work illustrated in this book that distinguishes it from other work is that an “imaginary” dialogue between Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire runs through the book using actual citations from their work. Each chapter starts with such a dialogue interspersed with the works of others and the author’s critical autobiographical reflections. With a brief overview of the socio-cultural evolution of imagination from pre-literate times to the present, the author explores some of the current iterations of imagination including the eugenics movement and “dark” imagination, sensing gaps and creative/critical imagination, metaphors as the language of imagination and empathy as social imagination. Reflecting upon emerging tensions, challenges, and possibilities curriculum workers face in such an era of standardization, the author calls for a curriculum of imagination. After providing a brief overview of the socio-cultural evolution of imagination from pre-literate times to the present, the author looks at some of the current iterations of imagination, including the eugenics movement and “dark” imagination, sensing gaps and creative/critical imagination, metaphors as the language of the imagination, and empathy as social imagination. All of these ideas are then incorporated in a curriculum of imagination that is envisioned through Joseph Schwab’s four commonplaces of curriculum followed by a discussion of emerging tensions, issues and possibilities for praxis and scholarship in present and future inquiry.

The Creative Spark

Author : Agustín Fuentes
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101983957
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis The Creative Spark by : Agustín Fuentes

Download or read book The Creative Spark written by Agustín Fuentes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new synthesis of paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and anthropology that overturns misconceptions about race, war and peace, and human nature itself, answering an age-old question: What made humans so exceptional among all the species on Earth? Creativity. It is the secret of what makes humans special, hiding in plain sight. Agustín Fuentes argues that your child's finger painting comes essentially from the same place as creativity in hunting and gathering millions of years ago, and throughout history in making war and peace, in intimate relationships, in shaping the planet, in our communities, and in all of art, religion, and even science. It requires imagination and collaboration. Every poet has her muse; every engineer, an architect; every politician, a constituency. The manner of the collaborations varies widely, but successful collaboration is inseparable from imagination, and it brought us everything from knives and hot meals to iPhones and interstellar spacecraft. Weaving fascinating stories of our ancient ancestors' creativity, Fuentes finds the patterns that match modern behavior in humans and animals. This key quality has propelled the evolutionary development of our bodies, minds, and cultures, both for good and for bad. It's not the drive to reproduce; nor competition for mates, or resources, or power; nor our propensity for caring for one another that have separated us out from all other creatures. As Fuentes concludes, to make something lasting and useful today you need to understand the nature of your collaboration with others, what imagination can and can't accomplish, and, finally, just how completely our creativity is responsible for the world we live in. Agustín Fuentes's resounding multimillion-year perspective will inspire readers—and spark all kinds of creativity.

The Altruistic Imagination

Author : John H. Ehrenreich
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801471230
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis The Altruistic Imagination by : John H. Ehrenreich

Download or read book The Altruistic Imagination written by John H. Ehrenreich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social work and social policy in the United States have always had a complex and troubled relationship. In The Altruistic Imagination, John H. Ehrenreich offers a critical interpretation of their intertwined histories, seeking to understand the problems that face these two vital institutions in American society. Ehrenreich demonstrates that the emphasis of social work has always vacillated between individual treatment and social reform. Tracing this ever-changing focus from the Progressive Era, through the development of the welfare state, the New Deal, and the affluent 1950s and 1960s, into the administration of Ronald Reagan, he places the evolution of social work in the context of political, cultural, and ideological trends, noting the paradoxes inherent in the attempt to provide essential services and reflect at the same time the intentions of the state. He concludes by examining the turning point faced by the social work profession in the 1980s, indicated by a return to casework and a withdrawal from social policy concerns.

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination

Author : Gary Lachman
Publisher : Floris Books
ISBN 13 : 1782504575
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (825 download)

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Book Synopsis Lost Knowledge of the Imagination by : Gary Lachman

Download or read book Lost Knowledge of the Imagination written by Gary Lachman and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability to imagine is at the heart of what makes us human. Through our imagination we experience more fully the world both around us and within us. Imagination plays a key role in creativity and innovation. Until the seventeenth century, the human imagination was celebrated. Since then, with the emergence of science as the dominant worldview, imagination has been marginalised -- depicted as a way of escaping reality, rather than knowing it more profoundly -- and its significance to our humanity has been downplayed. Yet as we move further into the strange new dimensions of the twenty-first century, the need to regain this lost knowledge seems more necessary than ever before. This insightful and inspiring book argues that, for the sake of our future in the world, we must reclaim the ability to imagine and redress the balance of influence between imagination and science. Through the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture

Author : Joseph Carroll
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030461904
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture by : Joseph Carroll

Download or read book Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture written by Joseph Carroll and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering volume offers an expansive introduction to the relatively new field of evolutionary studies in imaginative culture. Contributors from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and the humanities probe the evolved human imagination and its artefacts. The book forcefully demonstrates that imagination is part of human nature. Contributors explore imaginative culture in seven main areas: Imagination: Evolution, Mechanisms and Functions Myth and Religion Aesthetic Theory Music Visual and Plastic Arts Video Games and Films Oral Narratives and Literature Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture widens the scope of evolutionary cultural theory to include much of what “culture” means in common usage. The contributors aim to convince scholars in both the humanities and the evolutionary human sciences that biology and imaginative culture are intimately intertwined. The contributors illuminate this broad theoretical argument with comprehensive insights into religion, ideology, personal identity, and many particular works of art, music, literature, film, and digital media. The chapters “Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts” and “The Role of Aesthetic Style in Alleviating Anxiety About the Future” are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

The Evolutionary Mind

Author : Rupert Sheldrake
Publisher : Monkfish Book Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1939681103
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (396 download)

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Book Synopsis The Evolutionary Mind by : Rupert Sheldrake

Download or read book The Evolutionary Mind written by Rupert Sheldrake and published by Monkfish Book Publishing. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stimulating and often startling discussions between three friends, all highly original thinkers: Rupert Sheldrake, controversial biologist, Terence McKenna , psychedelic visionary, and Ralph Abraham , chaos mathematician. Their passion is to break out of paradigms that retard our evolution and to explore new possibilities. Through challenge and synergy they venture where few have gone before, leading their readers on an exciting journey of discovery. Their discussions focus on the evolution of the mind, the role of psychedelics, skepticism, the psychic powers of animals, the structure of time, the life of the heavens, the nature of God, and transformations of consciousness. “Three fine thinkers take us plunging into the universe of chaos, mind, and spirit. Instead of leaving us lost, they bring us back with startling insights and more wonder than we knew we had.” —Matthew Fox, Original Blessing and Sheer Joy "A jam-session of the mind, an intellectual movable feast, an on-going conversation that began over twenty years ago and remains as lively and relevant today as it ever was. Sadly, Terence had to leave the conversation a little earlier than planned. But the appearance of this book of trialogues at this critical, historical juncture is a reaffirmation of the potency of the optimistic vision that the trialogues express." —Dennis McKenna, brother of the late Terence McKenna Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of many books including The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind. Ralph Abraham is a mathematician, one of the pioneers of chaos theory and the author of several books including Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three Great Streams of History. The late Terence McKenna was a scholar of shamanism, ethno-botanist, psychedelic researcher and author of many books including Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations.

Imagination

Author : John Cocking
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134932081
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (349 download)

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Book Synopsis Imagination by : John Cocking

Download or read book Imagination written by John Cocking and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-11 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins, nature, function and effects of imagination have engrossed writers, theologians, philosophers and practitioners of the arts across the ages; its influence on painting and music continues to be debated. It has been simultaneously feared as a dangerous, uncontrollable force and revered as the supreme visionary power. Cocking's Imagination is an exploration of the history of imagination from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book opens with a treatment of imagination in the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Developments in the Middle Ages are traced, with particular attention to the parallel tradition in Islamic thought of the period and the book pursues the concept through the theories of Dante and the Neo-platonists to the High Renaissance. The manuscript was left unfinished on Professor Cocking's death in 1986 and has been edited by Penelope Murray, who adds an introductory essay. The book will be of particular value as a background to the explosion of interest in the imagination in the Romantic period.

A Reason for Everything

Author : Marek Kohn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780571223930
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (239 download)

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Book Synopsis A Reason for Everything by : Marek Kohn

Download or read book A Reason for Everything written by Marek Kohn and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An educative and fascinating tale... Kohn is a wonderful writer.' - A.C. Grayling, Literary Review

The Imagination Gap

Author : Brian Reich
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1787142078
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (871 download)

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Book Synopsis The Imagination Gap by : Brian Reich

Download or read book The Imagination Gap written by Brian Reich and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Imagination Gap helps leaders in every sector apply their imagination effectively to explore new, creative approaches to survive and thrive. Examples from a range of industries and settings, from Broadway to Silicon Valley, with simple steps and exercises, help you stop thinking the way you "should" and start making extraordinary things happen.