Reclaiming the Imagination - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com


Reclaiming the Imagination - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome, it follows that you can’t remember being one — but you can still let your imagination rip. With a bit of effort one can even imagine the impossible, such as discovering that Dick Cheney and Madonna are really the same person. It sounds like a platitude that fiction is the realm of imagination, fact the realm of knowledge.

Why did humans evolve the capacity to imagine alternatives to reality? Was story-telling in prehistoric times like the peacock’s tail, of no direct practical use but a good way of attracting a mate? It kept Scheherazade alive through those one thousand and one nights — in the story.

We apply much of the same cognitive apparatus whether we are working online, with input from sense perception, or offline, with input from imagination.
On further reflection, imagining turns out to be much more reality-directed than the stereotype implies.

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