杏吧原创

AS A historian of ideas, you would expect me to be concerned with the rise and fall of concepts throughout recorded history. What fascinates me the most, however, is the way ideas evolve. The philosopher Daniel Dennett from Tufts University in Boston described evolution as the most important idea ever, and the process certainly applies to ideas themselves and to language, in which most ideas are expressed. I think that many psychological concepts, because they originate in language coined before the rise of science, are now outmoded: in particular, 鈥渋magination鈥� and 鈥渋ntrospection鈥�.

For some people, ideas are ten a penny: what counts is ideas that work. For them, imagination isn鈥檛 some free-floating mental activity, some open-ended production of concepts or hypotheses, but thoughts that can be used to produce tangible, practical products. They prefer something captured by that very useful French verb, r茅aliser, to 鈥渕ake real鈥�. This implies that in any imaginative enterprise there is a process between the original thought and its final form, and that this activity 鈥� r茅alisation 鈥� is as crucial as the original idea.

I believe this to be a much more important distinction than we normally recognise. Like many words or ideas, 鈥渋magination鈥� is a pre-scientific entity, in the sense that it came into common usage before the scientific revolution 鈥� broadly speaking, the 16th and 17th centuries. It was and remains one of those warm, wholesome words, with only good things attaching to it. To be called imaginative is a high compliment. It means you are original, full of bright ideas, creative, a breaker of rules.

Most people think of the most imaginative period in history as the Renaissance, that flowering of painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre and music between St Thomas Aquinas, who first imagined a secular world, and the scientific revolution. There have been other imaginative explosions, notably the Romantic revolution at the turn of the 19th century that produced Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Hegel and Byron, and the works of Modernism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by the Impressionists, Richard Strauss, Klimt, Schnitzler, Picasso, Matisse, Sch枚nberg and their like. These works were often a response to the second scientific revolution, characterised by quantum physics, the discovery of the gene and the notion of the unconscious.

Important as it is, however, imagination and the explosions it fuels remain a mystery. In the 50th birthday edition of the Journal of the History of Ideas (1990), Donald Kelley, the American historian of the intellectual, singled out three great intellectual failures since 1940: the failure to achieve a satisfactory understanding of 鈥渟ecularisation鈥�; the widespread disappointment about 鈥減sychohistory鈥� when so many figures (including Erasmus, Descartes, Newton, Goethe and Nietzsche) cried out for psychological understanding; and the failure to grapple with 鈥渋magination鈥�, especially its role in producing ideas.

I have no better definition of imagination than the next person, nor do I have any special insight into why these imaginative explosions occur when they do. But I do offer two observations that may help us get to grips with it. The first is that 鈥渋magination鈥� is a psychological concept, and the second is that its meaning has evolved and is still evolving.

The traditional idea of imagination as great leaps of thought or insight, as major advances produced by geniuses, was perhaps useful for the arts. Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, C茅zanne and Picasso are generally regarded as the six geniuses of painting. Bernini did things in stone that many could not even do on canvas. Beethoven and Wagner, who both made huge strides in music, each thought himself a genius.

But with science, and even philosophy, size matters in a different way. Large leaps of the imagination can be dangerous. One of the first to argue this was Lionel Trilling, the American critic, in The Liberal Imagination. He wrote that the liberal approach to life, together with democracy鈥檚 pressures to consensus and conformity, had produced such intellectual straitjackets as psychoanalysis, sociology and Sartrean philosophy. While these all-embracing systems appeal to our need for closure, for tidiness, they stifle thought and delay progress.

Now put Trilling鈥檚 book alongside the 1998 book The Scientific Imagination by Gerald Holton, the Harvard historian of science. Holton pointed out that science moves ahead step by step, and that it is these small steps that eventually lead to great paradigm shifts. In other words, the smaller imaginative leaps of science actually produce greater innovation and, furthermore, practical change in the long run.

It is not hard to see why. It is much easier to verify a small imaginative leap than a large one. Others can then replicate the work to prevent a line of thought charging off in an insupportable direction. One can readily think of leaps of the imagination in science that became straitjackets: Samuel Hahnemann and homeopathy, Franz Anton Mesmer and mesmerism, and Matthias Schleiden, whose ideas about the origin of cells delayed the development of cytology by fully 50 years. Right now, theoretical physics is stalled, having trouble devising experiments to prove such new concepts as dark matter and superstrings. Maybe these imaginative leaps are just too large.

So following the advent of science, imagination has become a much smaller, less 鈥渨arm鈥� thing, no longer the preserve of geniuses. While researching his book, Holton found that scientists are mostly introverts, shy as children and very conscious as adults of peer pressure. In other words, very different from the wild, romantic, individualistic Beethoven or Wagnerian types we normally picture as imaginative artists.

But this evolution in the meaning of imagination, and the downsizing of the role of genius, though not trivial, is also important as a metaphor. Some sciences, especially the social and human sciences, are still trapped by the pre-scientific uses of words and their associated concepts 鈥� many of which have not evolved as imagination has. In my view this helps account for the lack of advances in these fields. It is noticeable, for example, that in the chemical revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in the advances in physiology and medicine throughout the 19th century, and in the golden age of particle physics between the 1890s (the discovery of the electron) and 1932 (the discovery of the neutron), scientists needed to coin new words, a new language, certainly a new terminology for their discoveries. Take 鈥渃ondenser鈥� and 鈥渟odium鈥� (both 1807), 鈥減alaeontology鈥� (1838) and 鈥渂acterium鈥� (1847). Even the electron, identified in 1897, was called the 鈥渃orpuscle鈥� at first.

鈥淧erhaps it鈥檚 time to retire 鈥榠magination鈥� and 鈥榠ntrospection鈥� in science鈥�

But the social, psychological and cognitive sciences remain stuck with pre-scientific words and concepts. For many of us the word 鈥渟oul鈥� is as obsolete as 鈥減hlogiston鈥�, but scientists still use such imprecise words as 鈥渃onsciousness鈥�, 鈥減ersonality鈥� and 鈥渆go鈥�, not to mention 鈥渕ind鈥�.

Colin McGinn, the British philosopher now based at Rutgers University, New Jersey, argues that consciousness is resistant to explanation, in principle and for all time. That may well be true if we hold to a traditional understanding of consciousness and the traditional way of exploring it, introspection. But introspection is like imagination, only more so: it is an ancient practice out of kilter with a scientific world.

In my recent book, Ideas: A history from fire to Freud, I explored the many times humans have turned 鈥渋nward鈥� to find 鈥渢he truth鈥�: from the prophets in ancient Israel, the Buddha and the writers of the Upanishads in India, Confucius in China and the Athenian Plato, who famously thought that the ideal realm of the forms could be apprehended only by looking in, to the introspections of St Augustine, Savonarola, Luther, Descartes, Vico, Kant and the Romantics, it is a dominant theme in the history of ideas. Freud鈥檚 tripartite structure of our inner world (id, ego, superego) is the latest turning-in. But my conclusion after this tour was that this approach hasn鈥檛 worked. Looking in, we have found nothing, nothing stable anyway, nothing we can agree upon, nothing conclusive, because there is nothing to find. To advance, we will need a new concept of consciousness and/or an alternative method of introspection.

The Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has made a stab in this direction. He cites three experiments. The first involves 6-month-old children: if they are left to play with a dozen toy animals and a new item is introduced, they will stare longer at a new type of object such as fruit than they will at a new animal. Although they do not have language with which to describe 鈥渁nimals鈥�, something is already going on in their heads which enables them to acquire and retain the concept. The second experiment shows that adults are faster at naming categories (鈥渙ranges are fruit鈥�, for example) if the object is presented as a picture instead of a word. Further, the pattern of brain activity is different if the object is presented verbally rather than pictorially. And the third shows that if a sentence, heard or read, ends with a semantically inconsistent word such as 鈥渁pples are cats鈥�, a particular brainwave pattern occurs. But the pattern does not occur for all violations of syntax; in other words, the brain is responding not to syntax but to meaning.

Kagan鈥檚 point is that there is a gap between brain states and cognitive states, and that, crucially, words do not fill the gap: it implies we have psychological structures he calls schemata, of which we are but dimly aware. I don鈥檛 much care for 鈥渟chemata鈥� because it鈥檚 too vague. But what I do like is that Kagan is identifying via experiments what appears to be a new organising principle, largely ignored by science. It may be a dead end or an exciting new avenue, but the fact we need a new word, and that this advance could not have been made by introspection, is encouraging.

Kagan also thinks the word 鈥減ersonality鈥� is misleading, implying a consistency in behaviour over time that tests show simply isn鈥檛 there. Likewise 鈥渄epression鈥�. If depression is the result of failure to meet some moral standard, it should be called a guilt reaction. If the same symptoms occur in an adolescent worried about his future because his family is poor, 鈥渉is condition is better described as hopelessness鈥�, says Kagan. A third depressive might have inherited some neurological problem. 鈥淭hese three should be placed in different diagnostic categories,鈥� he says, adding: 鈥淎 focus on conscious emotional states is retarding discovery of more fruitful concepts for mental illness.鈥�

What unites all this is the idea that our understanding is being held up by the shortcomings of language, in particular, by words and associated concepts that originated before science and now need attention. Perhaps it is time that, in science at least, 鈥渋magination鈥� and 鈥渋ntrospection鈥� are remodelled or, preferably, retired. Artists can have fun with them, but the serious business of the world has moved on.