Figure 49: Theories of imagination

 

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Antiquity and Middle Ages: phantasia, imaginatio

Late Renaissance: Psychology of cognition

Linguistic Differentiations

Psychological theories of imagination in the 19th century

20th century: Visual thinking is very disputed

It is no longer trendy to speak of visual thinking

1909-1939: Nevertheless psychological research on imagery and creativity

1940-1960: Psychological studies on imagination

Starting from 1960: hesitant research on imagery

1980-2000: research boom on „imagery“

 

 

 

Antiquity and Middle Ages: phantasia, imaginatio

 

The Ancient Greeks called the modelling process in mind „ phantasia”. Influential was the analysis of Aristotle in De anima III, 3“ (Gerard Watson 1988; Dorothea Frede 1992; Bryn Rhys Williams 1996).

Romans used mostly „imago "(almost never: imaginatio, repraesentatio, perceptio – see Raimund Daut 1975). Only Boethius (ca. 500 AD) explained in his „ Consolatio "(V. book): Imaginative power judges the shape without matter („Imaginatio vero solam sine materia iudicat figuram ").

 

Already Augustinus (ca. 400 AD) distinguished three kinds of phantasia:

·        productive

·        reproductive

·        synthetic.

 

In medieval philosophy the word „imaginatio" was common, e. g. with Abelard (Paivi Hannele Jussila 1995), Hugo of St. Viktor (Heinrich Ostler 1906; John Philip Kleinz 1944; Roger Baron 1957; Heinz Robert Schlette 1961) and Thomas Aquinas (Pirmin Klaunzler 1949, Karl Bürgi 1972).

 

Scholastic John of Salisbury (1159) thought that ideas (phantasies) were caused by intermediation of „species“, as „rerum imagines in mente apparentes“.

 

Good overviews are given by Murray Wright Bundy (1927) and John Martin Cocking (1991).

 

 

Late Renaissance: Psychology of cognition

 

Since 1500 imagination and fantasy are frequently described and discussed.

 

Only postum – in 1501 - Pico della Mirandola’ s book De imaginatione“, has been published – soon (1536) also under the tilte: „De Phantasia“.

 

Around 1540 the personal physician of the Pope, Giovanni Fracastoro, postulated a psychology of cognition, effectuated by sensual symbols („cognitionem omnem per rerum simulacra fieri“). To connect and to separate are the basic functions of thinking.

 

Montaigne loved the words „fantaisie“ and „imagination“. He used each more than hundred times in his „Essais“ (1580). He dealt also directly with the topic imagination in his essay: „De la force de l'imagination“ (see Ian Dalrynple McFarlane 1968).

 

 

Linguistic Differentiations

 

Paracelsus has introduced the German word „Einbildung“ for „imaginatio“ (I. Betschart 1952). 100 years later Georg Philipp Harsdörffer invented the made-up word „Einbildungskraft“ for „facultas imaginandi“ (Hans Langendörfer 1940; Dietmar Kamper 1981; Isabel Zollna 1990). Again nearly 100 years later Christian Wolff introduced the German word „Vorstellung“ into the philosophical language.

 

In the Age of Enlightenment the most used word for. „imaginatio“ was

·        in English „idea“ (see e. g. John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, Thomas Reid – John William Yolton 1956, 1990, 1993, 1996; George Pitcher 1971, 1988; Stephen P. Stich 1975; Peter Alexander 1985; Willis Doney 1989; Roger D. Gallie 1989; Michael Ayers 1997),

·        in French „idée“ (e. g. Etiennne Bonnot de Condilac, Charles Bonnet; in the 19th century: Alfred Fouillée).

Around 1900 one used also „images“.

 

Since around 1700 in German „Imagination“ has bee used, but not often. Phantasy has been conceived as „Dichtkraft“ or „Dichtungsvermögen“ since 1750 (Georg Friedrich Meier, Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, Johann Nicolaus Tetens).

 

Since 1750 similarly accumulate studies on genius (Edgar Zilsel 1926; Hans Thüme 1927; Jochen Schmidt 1985; Penelope Murray 1989) as well as on heuristics or the art of invention (Michael von Matuschka 1974).

 

For different kinds of „Vorstellungen“ in German see:

the long list in the German article „Modellgeschichte ist Kulturgeschichte“ – paragraph: Viele unterschiedliche Arten von Vorstellungen.

 

 

Psychological theories of imagination in the 19th century

 

Manifold inspired by the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Jakob Barion 1929; Jürgen Stolzenberg 1986) were a lot of theoretical debates and empirical research on imagination on the one side, intuition (Josef König 1926) and intellectual or productive thinking on the other side.

 

·        Johann Friedrich Herbart postulated a dynamics of imagination (since 1816; Matthias Heesch 1999)

·        Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1852) meant: „The thing per se is unrecognizable, we only recognize the relationships, namely in the symbolic way.“ He used already the term „fiction“

·        Alexander Bain (1855, 1859) saw all mental activity based on two kinds of association: contiguity and similarity

·        Herbert Spencer (1855) took cognition also as symbolic because the underlying things are manifestations of the unreconizable

·        James Rush (1865) compared the brain with a reflecting mirror

·        Hermann von Helmholtz (1865; 1867) thought as Lotze that cognition ist mental working up of sensual material and leads to a symbolic apprehension oft the relations between things. And we use them to control our behavior

·        Wilhelm Wundt (1862; 1874) coined the „principle of creative synthesis“, Interplay of psychic elements gives birth to thins with new qualities and values. The functions of thinking are the means to emulate the reale relations of the objects symbolically

·        Franz Brentano (1874) discovered that psychic acts have an „intentional object“. Edmund Husserl (1900) followed him

·        Sir Francis Galton (1880; Ruth Schwartz Cowan 1969; Derek William Forrest 1974) called general imagery „generic images“ or „blended memories.

 

Barely noticed were the psychological explorations of imagination by Narcisse Michot (1876), Henri Joly (1877) and Wilfrid Lay (1898). Only the essay of Théodule Ribot on „L’imagination créatrice“ (1900) got wide reputation.

 

Without notion stayed similarly the research of Ernest Royer (1867), the physicist John Tyndall (1870), Joseph-Florentin Bonnel (1890) and Charles-Ernest Adam (1890) on imagination in the exact sciences.

 

 

20th century: Visual thinking is very disputed

 

The first half of the 20th century is shaped by a strong contrast. On the one side we have the Wuerzburg School (psychology of thinking) and the Behaviorists as picture destructors, on the other hand we had an eruption of activities and thinking about concerning creativity, which resulted also in exploration of imagination and genius.

 

 

It is no longer trendy to speak of visual thinking

 

Since 1901 the philosopher and psychologist Oswald Kuelpe and his students in Wuerzburg questioned the theses of symbolic recognition and visual thinking. Most experiments of this „Wuerzburg school“ showed that humans performend „non-pictorial“ thinking (George Humphrey 1951; Steffi Hammer 1990; Horst Gundlach 1999).

Wilhelm Wundt protested against the experimental design as well as against the conclusions. The public controversy (1907-09) resulted in discrediting of the “introspective” method – despite Wundt was wrong.

In 1913 John Broadus Watson led the death blow for visual thinking by presenting the program of Behaviorism in his pamphlet: „Psychology as the Behaviorist sees it“. He postulated a psychology without using „terms as consciousness, states of consciousness, psyche, imagination, etc.“

 

Since then to 1960 in certain scientific communities it was no longer trendy to speak of „mental imagery".

Also Analytic Philosophy and later Logical Empirism, which soon controlled the whole Anglo-Saxon area and thought the medium of thinking is language, denied the traditional view that the verbal meaning is deduced of „pictures in the brain".

 

 

1909-1939: Nevertheless psychological research on imagery and creativity

 

Despite most psychologists in consequence eschew to speak of „mental imagery“ till 1960 there was some research on imagery and creativity.

 

The important books of the two French Théodule Ribot (“L'imagination créatrice” 1900) and Henri Bergson (“L'évolution créatrice"1907) had formed the counterweight to the Wuerzburger School and to Watson. They caused a respectable number of investigations into mental and visual imagery and imagination as well as into creativity, “Schöpferkraft” and genius.

 

Connected with these investigations were often studies of problem solving. The first impulses came again from the Wuerzburger School. Immediately it went internationally with the Englishmen Charles Spearman (1904) and William McDougall (1910), the Germans Karl Bühler (1907/8) and Otto Selz (1913), the Frenchman Henri Poincaré (1908), the American John Dewey (1909) and the Viennese Sigmund Freud (1911).

 

Between 1909 and 1939 morethan a dozen psychology reseraches – mostly women – at American Universities such as Cornell (Ithaca, N. Y.) and Columbia (New York) presented studies on mental and visual imagery Some of these have been reprinted in the 1970s. In the same time (1909-1939) apperared more than 100 investigations and books on creativity, among them at least six on „creative imagination“.

 

Also in German between 1900 and 1920 were published some works on imagination and reproduction.

 

 

1940-1960: Psychological studies on imagination

 

On first sight it seems, that there was no research into the topic imagery/ imagination from 1940 to 1960. But in fact there ares more than a dozen psychological publications. Unheeded went e. g. by Austin Larimore Porterfield “Creative factors in scientific research” (1941) or the thesis by Abraham Antoine Moles „La création scientifique“ (1952).

Much more studies dealt with imagination

·        in poetry (Sophokles, Properz, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Poe, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Tennyson, Browning, Browne, Ruskin, Claudel, Malraux),

·        in religion,

·        in mathematics and

·        in philosophy (Platon, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Fichte).

 

For research on orientation plans in the brain see:

Fig. 74: representation.

 

 

Starting from 1960: hesitant research on imagery

 

Around 1960 a similar paradox situation arouse as at the beginning of the century. On the one hand the so-called “cognitive” approach in psychology, anthropology (Ethnology) and ethologic spread rapidly out, on the other hand research pounced on imagery and mental images and got back to the scene metaphor and analogy.

 

First the discussion spread on:

·        „imagery“ (Silvan Solomon Tomkins 1962; Alice Constance Owens 1963; Robert Rutherford Holt 1964; Stanley M. Jencks, Donald M. Peck 1968; Alan Richardson 1969; R. C. Anderson, J. L. Hidde 1971; Allan Paivio 1971; Sydney Joelson Segal 1971; Joel R. Levin et al. 1972; Peter W. Sheenan 1972; Martha Crampton 1977; Geir Kaufmann 1979, 1980; R. L. Solso 1979)

·        „mental maps“ (Peter Robin Gould 1966; 1974) or

·        „mental images“ (James Wreford Watson 1967; Alastair Hannay 1971; Roger N. Shepard 1978, 1982).

 

Vigorously critizised have been the theories on imaginaton by Zenon Walter Pylyshyn (1973), Jerry A. Fodor (1975, 1981, 2000), John Robert Anderson (1978) and Peter Slezak (1990).

A first overview on the diverging conceptions of the „pictorialists“ and the „propositionalists“ is given by Stephen Michael Kosslyn and James R. Pomerantz (1977). A good overview on the debate from 1973 till 2002 is given by Verena Gottschling (2003).

 

Some impact had the “Psycho-imagination therapy” by Joseph E. Shorr (1972, 1974, 1980, 1989). He condensed his experience with this kind of psychotherapy in 1998.

 

 

1980-2000: research boom on „imagery“

 

After 1980 there was no holding the researchers. Studies on „imagery“ were published by Stephen Michael Kosslyn (1980), John T. E. Richardson (1980), Roger N. Shepard and Lynn A. Cooper (1982), Peter Edwin Morris, Peter J. Hampson (1983), Akhter Ahsen (1984), Martha J. Farrah (1984), Artur I. Miller (1984; 1996), Allan Paivio (1986, 1991), David Henry Tudor Scott (1986), Mark Rollins (1989) and Ronald A. Finke (1989).

 

Additionaly ther were edited some omnibuses, e. g. by Ned Block (1981), John C. Yuille (1983), Malcolm L. Fleming and Deane W. Hutton (1983), Anees Ahmad Sheikh (1983; 1986), Mark A. McDaniel and Michael Pressley (1987), Michel Denis et al. (1988).

 

.More than 200 studies on imagery and some on “mental representation” were published from 1990 to 2000.

In 1993 Alan Richardson published a bibliography on „mental imagery“ covering the years 1872-1976. In the following year Stephen Michael Kosslyn stated to have terminated defintively the „debate on imagery“ – this a title by Michael Tye (1991) – with his voluminous work „Image and Brain“.

Interesting studies were by Robert H. Logie and Michel Denis („Mental images in human cognition“, 1991), Beverly Roskos-Ewoldsen et al. („ Imagery, creativity, and discovery”, 1993), Ralph D. Ellis (“Questioning consciousness. The interplay of imagery, cognition, and emotion in the human brain”, 1995) and Marlene Behrmann et al. (“The neuropsychology of mental imagery“, 1995).

 

In 2000 Michel Denis offered a “state of the art”, and the old master of linguistic and thinking philosophy Jerry Alan Fodor warned: "The mind doesn't work that way!"

 

 

Bibliography

Imagination, imagery, mental imagery

see also:

The "Pictorial turn"/ "iconic turn"

Anschaulichkeit - vividness