engleski

Imagining the Impossible

It is an authentic feature of the human mind that it has the capacity to imagine meanings, things, situations etc. beyond the sensualy given, the literal, the actual, the ‘ real’ and even beyond the ‘ possible’ , and it is due to it that we are able to infer and interpret, see and make sense of what is only partially provided or not given at all. An imaginative interpreter within us is thus needed and always at stake, and it is due to it that we can have the world that exceedes the boundaries of the presently given, what is best manifested in artistic "worldmaking". Our cognitive world (even in its most exact, that is, scientific version) is created as our most plausible hypothesis or guess about it. Very little of it is (‘ objectively’ ) given in an empirically founded way. It rather emerges as imagined possibility. Having that in mind we can appreciate an illuminating dictum that „ making comes before matching" (E. Gombrich), whereby ‘ making’ is to be understood as imaginative deed that refers to words or works of any sort (everyday, artistic or scientific). According to E. Cassirer: "Concepts do not refer, like sense perceptions, to any particular 'given', to a concrete and present situation ; they move rather, in the sphere of the possible and seek, as it were, to delineate the frame of the possible." It is thus justified to claim that imagination precedes observation, that the possible comes before the real. However, on the road to the ‘ real’ an active and creative animal symbolicum is navigating without ready-made criteria for what is possible, and what is impossible. The imaginative human being deals with the 'impossible' in a quite natural way. The imagination games (that also include purposefull experimenting with the 'impossible') are present everywhere where there is a creative impulse to beat the cannons of common-sense, habits of thought, and standards of the conventional.

imagination, the 'real', the (im)possible, art, creativity, mind

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