In Praise of the Imaginary

I maintain my strong interest in the relationship between the imaginary and the external world, despite the fact that it may seem unimportant in the scheme of things.  This is the place where I like to discuss this topic, given that this blog is, after all, named, in honor of Novalis, after his famous collection of ideas.  The imagination was certainly a subject of interest to Novalis—Novalis who said,

     Phantasie nur gar zu gern nach den Grenzen sich begibt, und übermütig das Unsinnliche, Übermäßige zu ergreifen und auszusprechen sucht.  (Imagination is only too happy to push the limits, and exuberantly seeks to grasp and proclaim the nonsensical and excessive.) Heinrich von Ofterdingen

     Here we are not talking about the “practical imagination,” that helps us to dream up new machines and new ways of cheating death and new ways of making money.  No, we are speaking of imagination that allows us to experience what is possible only in dreams: to fly under our own power, to visit cities out of the lost, distant past, to walk hand in hand with the spirit of a tree, or to speak in the languages of wolves and bears.  How are we able to experience the products of our imagination (or of the imagination of others—through mere words), so vividly?  Why are these experiences so much like the experience of external reality?  One could certainly argue that it is because we also “imagine” the outside world, we experience external reality through the mirror of our idea of it.  The mental tools that allow us to perceive and comprehend the external world are the same ones that we use in constructing the imaginary (or summoning forth memory).  While this might be true, it doesn’t explain why we are able to actually experience something that doesn’t incorporate direct sensory input, and experience it so completely.  I understand that this could be considered a philosophical question, a psychological or general neuroscience issue, or even a subject for cognitive linguistics or cognitive anthropology.  But my interest in this question is motivated by something very simple: a real eagerness to improve the status and position of the imaginary in all of our manifold human affairs.