People who write novels or short stories, people who create art in any medium, rely on their imaginations, the source of creativity. Imagination unfolds within us from a realm outside of the everyday world of cause and effect. It’s in sync with right-brain thinking, the home of intuition, hunches, psychic abilities, synchronicity. As a result, imagination is not easily quantified.
Would it be a good idea to try to measure imagination? Would we better understand how imagination works if we could somehow scrutinize it with scientific tools?
That is exactly what the Imagination Institute, based in Pennsylvania is attempting to do. Thanks to a generous donation from the John Templeton Foundation, the institute this Friday, May 15, will hand out up to 15 two-year grants for $150,000 to $200,000 each to researchers who have generated proposals to create an ‘imagination quotient,’ an attempt to ‘objectively measure imagination.’ In fact, the institute calls its initiative, Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an ‘Imagination Quotient.’
Hmm, that phrase sounds like an oxymoron to me. But before I say anything further, here’s more about the objective of the project.
In their own words, the institute has “targeted psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators who conduct research on theory of mind, mental imagery, mental simulation, perspective taking, prospective thought, daydreaming, mind wandering, counter-factual thinking, creativity, memory, curiosity, child development, aging, social cognition, and related fields, to support projects that seek to test and validate a proposed measure and develop an intervention for imagination/perspective. This initiative encourages such researchers to collaborate with individuals in corporate, military, school, health, university, governmental, and artistic settings to demonstrate that the proposed measure and interventions work in such a setting.”
My immediate impression is that I don’t think this scientific endeavor is going to work. When mainstream science applies its rules and measurements to something as elusive as imagination, I suspect the results will be embarrassingly tedious papers lacking imagination as the researchers attempt to apply left brain thinking to right-brain processes in a futile attempt to harness the unruly and hard to believe aspects of imagination.
Well, maybe that’s my imagination going wild! What the researchers might call ‘counter-factual thinking.’ That term suggests that imagination might lead us into believing stuff that’s not true—at least not acceptable to the mainstream scientific community—stuff like the paranormal and alien abductions.
I will be surprised if these researchers say anything positive—if even anything at all— about the role of the sixth sense. Mainstream researchers rely on the analytical mind, on logic and rational thinking, attributes that don’t coincide with intuitive processes. After all, mainstream neurologists and psychologist avidly reject the idea of meaningful coincidence and label such events as random and meaningless. They dismiss psychic abilities as unproven.
Maybe I’m being too harsh in pre-judging this project, especially since I haven’t seen the proposals that will win the grants. However, for me, a dead giveaway about the intended direction can be found here in the institute’s graphic design at the top of their page. Imagination is seen as turning cogwheels, implying that imagination is like a machine, that the universe is a great machine. The old paradigm. Hello, machines do not have imaginations.
Anyhow, best of luck to the winners of the grants. They will have two years to diddle with imagination to their heart’s content. My guess is that they prove, to the project’s chagrin, that you can’t harness imagination and turn it into a machine. – Rob
Schrödinger’s cat
I think there will be a new physics of consciousness emerging & then our understanding will shift. It amazes me that even though we know consciousness affects outcomes as in the double slit experiment, we still fail to understand that we each create our reality in the moment & because we always bring the past into the present now moment this interference prevents the birth of the absolutely new in the present moment. Most of us are still hypnotised by conditioning & education & ensalved & limited by both. Particles of pure consciousness/light have no direction or bias until we breathe them in and they are affected by the vibration of our thoughts, feelings & expectations, in this way the universe expresses itself through you, directed by your preferences.
I think that they might have more luck trying to bottle a thought.
I can’t imagine them having much luck on this project. 🙂
It’s an oxymoron initiative. To be sure I verified the dictionary definition of “quotient” and it is:
mathematics : the number that results when one number is divided by another
: the degree to which a specific quality or characteristic exists
the numerical ratio usually multiplied by 100 between a test score and a standard value
: the magnitude of a specified characteristic or quality
By default the initiative – Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an ‘Imagination Quotient.’ is invalid as the definition of Imagination does not relate to mathematics, dividing or multiplying, weight or any other measurement. Imagination refers to creative ability for new things; ideas, resources, etc. So how can science anticipate the ability to divide or multiply that which has yet to be imagined.
Funny scientists. They need to stick with cause and effect studies. Things that can be graphed and repeated over and over. They might as well create an initiative to hypothesize the numerical value of chaos.
Imagination, like consciousness, is more like music than computation.
Agreed!
I don’t see that you can quantify imagination – other than stats might ‘prove’ that some people ‘appear’ to have more than others.
Rob, I agree with you 100%. Perhaps imagination is like the universe, limitless, mysterious and unquantifiable.
well said ……….. personally, the whole idea of these academics trying to harness and understand imagination, presumably so they can quontify it (and the bottle it, so it can be useful for industry and, of course, the military?)……..makes me nauseous. You want to see imagination at work? Give just a fraction of that money to any struggling arts group or arts center, and watch the imaginations blossum, with just a little support and a few funds, instead of being consigned to the “not really relevant” corner of society.
Totally agree with Lauren.