Over the next three posts I will explore three radically different evolutionary
theories of human imagination. The first, put forward by British archaeologist Steven Mithen, examines the
archaeological record for evidence of technological change and creative development.
This will then be followed by a theory proposed by Susan Blackmore based upon a
Darwinian approach to cultural development known as Meme Theory. Lastly, before
we move on to a broader discussion of the bounds of imagination, we will
encounter Donald Brook’s theory of representation which provides important
analytical tools for conceptualizing representation and for understanding the
evolution of imagination and the emergence of language.
In a paper entitled
"The Evolution of Imagination" (2001) British archaeologist Steven
Mithen outlines three different forms of imagination: the kind that allows us
to distinguish between differing available options (decision-making imagination),
imagination of the thoughts or intentions of others (social imagination or Theory of Mind) and fantasy
(where the rules of nature "are
broken or simply do not exist").
Mithen begins by raising a
series of questions about fantasy and imagination and by contrasting fantasy
artworks such as those of Arthur C. Clarke or Salvador Dali with what he
suggests are "more imaginative"
works that do not break the rules of society or nature (Jane Austen for
example). he writes: "This is,
perhaps, the type of imagination that we find most fulfilling."
Later
in the paper Mithen discusses the archaeological evidence for the emergence of
imagination and he notes that our ancestors were routinely manufacturing stone
tools as long as 1.8 million years ago. He uses this evidence to speculate
about the need to imagine the intended form of tools during their manufacture
as well as the imagination (social)
necessary to anticipate the actions of fellow hunters and to make rudimentary
communications with them during collective hunting expeditions.
Mithen also points out that
our ancestors’ methods of tool manufacture, or their types and forms of tools,
underwent very little, if any, developmental change over an extraordinarily
long period of time and he proposes that this was due to a functional isolation
of different domains of imagination such that discoveries in one domain could
not be imaginatively transposed to another:
"As a consequence, ideas about, say, animal behavior, could not be engaged with those about, say, people, to come up with notions of talking animals or beings that are part human and part animal. [...] Consequently “rules” about fracture dynamics of stone may have been an integral part of their technological intelligence, and those about facial expressions part of their social intelligence... the type of imagination that leads to fantasy requires that such rules be broken, or at least ignored."
Mithen
makes a strict distinction between imagination on one hand and rule breaking
imagination, ie: fantasy on the other.
"How were modern humans able to engage in this new type of thinking? The answer I have provided in my previous work is that they were able to integrate bodies of knowledge and ways of thinking that had evolved in, and previously been restricted to, quite different cognitive domains. For instance, they could take knowledge about a lion, and about a man, and come up with a new imaginary type of animal—that represented by the 33,000-year-old lion/man carving from Hohlenstein Stadel, Germany. I have termed this ability “cognitive fluidity” and have argued that it underlies art, religion and science."
Mithen
concludes by clarifying how the three forms of imagination (which could loosely
be described as decision-making, social
and fantasy) most likely evolved at
different stages in human history and that fantasy is the most recent. He also
suggests that the reason we tend to find fictions of the Jane Austen variety
more fulfilling is because this form of imagination (the social form, in which rules
of nature are not broken) is more thoroughly seated in our psyches due to its
more
deeply embedded ancestral origins.
Despite
Mithen’s belief that works of fantasy are less fulfilling than those formed
through the exercise of social imagination, he makes a notable acknowledgement
that without the unique
development of imagination that has given rise to
fantasy we would be locked
into a significantly more restricted form of
imagination in which culture is unlikely ever to have
arisen. According to
Mithen this cognitive fluidity as he
calls it, which is inextricably linked to fantasy,
has allowed other forms of
imagination to flourish and to far outshine the
products of fantasy alone.
Persuasive as Mithen’s
hypothesis may be, it rests on the assumption that imagination is – or at least
has been in our evolutionary past - clearly divisible between these three
fundamental forms. As with the Autism research (mentioned in part II) that similarly
posits a social form of imagination, there is little unequivocal evidence that
such distinct forms of imagination can and do exist independent of imagination
as a whole and there is even less evidence that they might ever have been
functionally separated from each other in the way that Mithen suggests. Furthermore,
despite their rigorous archaeological underpinnings, Mithen’s claims about
these forms of imagination cannot easily be further tested because we have no more
tangible record of the cognitive processes of our ancient ancestors than that
provided by the artefacts with which Mithen is already expertly familiar. So,
to assume that the explosion of culture that erupted approximately 50,000 years
ago was due to a change in imaginative brain function is little more than speculative
and as such it is no more plausible for instance than the hypothesis that our
ancestors switched at this time from predominantly gestural communication to other
forms of representational communication, of which verbal communication is the
most likely contender. Until we discover more conclusive evidence in support of
Mithen’s claims I think there is good reason to continue to explore alternative
theories that might better illuminate the darkness of our ancestral past.
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