Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition

Seven The Evolution of the Imagination

B { 139 } Remember the Sphinx: A Prelude to the Empirical Sciences As we turn our attention to the explanations of the imagination furnished by the contemporary empirical sciences, it is wise to remember the Sphinx. When Peirce wrote “A Guess at the Riddle,” he asked that a small vignette of the Sphinx be placed under the title. But why? I suspect Emerson (the author of “The Sphinx” in 1841) and Thoreau (a commentator on this favorite poem of Emerson) had a pretty good idea. Once again, “A Guess at the Riddle” was Peirce’s rough outline of the way that triadic relations obtained first in metaphysics and psychology and then in the natural world (physiology, biology, and physics ). In traversing these fields, Peirce was intent on showing how chance, law, and habit formation were operative in the processes of mind and matter. This essay amounts to his response to the question of the Sphinx, to that riddle that continued to nag Peirce about the relationship between human creativity and the creative forces of nature. In short, it was Peirce’s shot at answering the riddle of existence. No small task. Seven The Evolution of the Imagination 140 The Evolution of the Imagination A quick lesson in mythology: the Sphinx—half woman, half lion— guarded the gates of ancient Thebes. It would ask travelers to answer a question, and when they were unable to do so, the monster would kill them. One day, a powerful man approached the Sphinx and was greeted with the following question: “What travels on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?” He responded: “Man, who crawls as a child, walks as an adult, and uses a cane in old age.” Upon hearing this answer, the Sphinx threw herself into the ocean, freeing Thebes of her harsh rule. This man was Oedipus, who, thanks to the slaying of the Sphinx, was brought into Thebes as a hero and soon to be king. We all know that things ultimately do not go well for Oedipus. Indeed, his guess at the riddle of the Sphinx eventually reveals itself as partial, or incomplete, or inadequate, or disastrous. Even in providing a seemingly satisfying answer to the Sphinx, Oedipus commits unknowing and ultimately fatal mistakes. This is what we human beings do—and do with stunning regularity. The Sphinx was supposed to stand guard over Peirce’s “A Guess at the Riddle” as a reminder of how mistaken seemingly good answers can be. It serves as a symbol of caution that might serve us well as we attempt to provide our own answers via the empirical sciences. The previous chapter concluded with a question that motivates the remainder of this project: “How did the physical stuff of the world give rise to an ordered physiology that, in turn, over time, gave rise to the human imagination?” Working through the question of the imagination requires a particular humility, a particular type of doubt. It is the type of doubt that only the Sphinx can inspire. If, as Peirce and Kant seem to suggest, the processes of the imagination are at once continuous with the logic and structuring of nature, this humility ought to be readily apparent. The conclusions that we come to will not only bear on the field of aesthetics but on epistemology and the natural sciences on the whole. Indeed, if we proceed with utter confidence in our portrayal of imagination, it seems certain that it is not the imagination that will be described but some poor model that fails to acknowledge its scope and complexity. And we don’t want to end up like Oedipus, do we? To what extent is the imagination continuous with the natural world? Linguists, cognitive neuroscientists, and biologists such as George Lakoff, The Evolution of the Imagination 141 Mark Johnson, Gerald Edelman, Donald Tucker, Antonio Damasio, and Vittorio Gallese, as well as complexity theorists and physicists such as Stuart Kauffman and John Holland, have begun to explore this continuity . In many cases, their work sheds new light on the imagination and provides new richness to the accounts that have been sketched out by Kant and Peirce. The prior chapters began to describe the movement of the imagination : its receptivity, its novel activity, its ability to project into the future while remaining oddly rooted in its past. They have also described the movement of the imagination insofar...