Music, Science, and Culture

Music is conceptualized as a product and a process of imagination. It is often assumed that engagement in music initiates the developmental and evolutionary emergence of imagination. This conception of music and its relationship to human powers of imagining is treated differently in science and musicology. For science, music is simply a complex pattern of sound or the experience of structured sound. For musicology and ethnomusicology, music cannot be separated from the cultural contexts in which they are embedded. This chapter proposes a broad operational definition of music which can be acceptable and applicable cross-naturally. This radical redefinition of music may provide ways of understanding music as both a culturally embedded practice and biologically grounded structure. Apart from providing a redefinition of music, the chapter also investigates some of the potential implications and consequences of this radical redefinition of music such as the possibility that the human capacity for culture may have been supported and consolidated by the emergence and presence of musicality.

Seven Steps in the Evolution of the Human Imagination

The modern human is a product of six million years of evolution wherein it is assumed that the ancestor of man resembles that of a chimpanzee. This assumption is based on the similarities of the ape-like brain size and post-cranial characteristics of the earliest hominid species to chimpanzees. Whilst it is unclear whether chimpanzees share the same foresight and contemplation of alternatives as with humans, it is nevertheless clear that chimpanzees lack creative imagination — an aspect of modern human imagination that sets humanity apart from its hominid ancestors. Creative imagination pertains to the ability to combine different forms of knowledge and ways of thinking to form creative and novel ideas. This chapter discusses seven critical steps in the evolution of the human imagination. These steps provide a clear picture of the gradual emergence of creative imagination in humans from their primitive origins as Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. This chronological evolution of the imaginative mind of humans involves both biological and cultural change that began soon after the divergence of the two lineages that led to modern humans and African apes.

Imaging Imagination: Brain Scanning of the Imagined Future

Imagination is believed to be made-up of two components. The first one suggests that acts of imagination engage similar networks in the brain to those used for motor and sensory processing during interactions with the real world. The second component purports that the selection processes used in the subcomponents of imagination such as mindedness, anticipation, and counterfactual thinking rely on the subcortical and cortical networks of the brain which consist of components such as the cerebellum, orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and cingulate cortex. This chapter reviews the emerging literature on neuroimaging of various components of imagination. Imaging and other neuroscientific techniques offer various possibilities in the architecture of the imaginative mind. It shows how the neural bases of the imaginative activities are organized. Imaginative processes are distributed activities which recruit several brain areas and networks. These complex relations within and between these various networks are illustrated by the Dynamic Workspace Hypothesis. However it is expected that the precise functional roles of these interacting networks can be accurately defined through the advent of brain scanning and neuroimaging, particularly through the technical breakthroughs imagined in a Coda.

A Claim on the Reader1

This chapter discusses the impact of narratives on the imaginative faculties of the readers. Imaginative engagement with a narrative has two aspects: what is to be imagined from the narratives and how it is imagined. The second aspect requires the notion of a point of view wherein readers imagine the events of the story from a certain vantage point, which involves eliciting certain kinds of responses to the events and to the characters who act them out. Narratives have the capacity to prescribe a certain point of view just as they are able to enforce what is to be imagined. This capacity to prescribe specific point of view is done not through explicit direction but rather through the expressive nature of the narratives. In this chapter, the focus is on the many relevant factors that motivate the readers to imitate or adopt the point of view offered by the authors or the narratives. It examines the tendency of readers to respond imitatively to their own imaginative construction of the author’s mind.

Autism and the Imaginative Mind

Autism is diagnosed through a symptom of clusters known as the diagnostic triad. One of these is the rigid adherence to routines, repetitive activities, and narrowly focused interests which represent behavioural and cognitive biases due to a lack of imaginative cognition. The other two clusters include impairment in communication and social interaction because of impairments of imagination. These symptoms gave rise to the assumption that autism impairs imagination. Symptoms consistent with this view are prominent throughout the clinical and research profile of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, some individuals diagnosed with autism exhibit excellent gifts in the field of creative imagination such as in arts, music, and poetry. Some of these personages who suffered from autism include Samuel Beckett, Albert Einstein, Andy Warhol, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This claim purports that autism is not only compatible with creative imagination but in some sense promotes it. This chapter discusses the evidence for the impairment of the imagination in ASD and shows how these problems align with the key psychological models of autism. It evaluates the evidence for elements of preserved imagination by considering autistic visual arts and autistic spectrum poetry. It also highlights the implications of the relationship of autism and imagination.

The Way We Imagine1

This chapter focuses on the engine of human imagination —the conceptual integration in which conceptual arrays are blended to form compressed, memorable conceptual packets, agreeable to human thought. The highest form of conceptual integration is the ‘double-scope’ integration. Double scope integration is the hallmark that distinguishes modern human imagination from its ancestors. The double-scope integration network consists of input conceptual arrays with different organizing frames and creates a blend with organizing frame that receives projections from each of those organizing frames. In this network, the organizing frames give contributions to the blend, and their sharp divergences offer the possibility for rich clashes. These clashes offer conceptual challenges and the resulting blends can turn out to be imaginative.

Autonomy and Control in Children’s Interactions with Imaginary Companions

This chapter discusses children’s private role play with imaginary companions and playmates which the children created and interacted with and/or talked about regularly. Although imaginary companions are at times integrated into play with other children or family members, this type of role play in general occurs within a solitary context. Imaginary companions are interesting as they provide information on social and cognitive development. For instance, relationships formed by children with their imaginary companion offer a glimpse of the child’s concept of friendship and how it functions. In this chapter, explanations of why some children create imaginary companions with negative characteristics are considered. It discusses how studies of negative imaginary companions of children has the potential of providing fresh information on the distinction between automatic and controlled processes in consciousness and the relation between inhibitory play and pretend play.

Mental Imagery and Creative Thought

Mental imagery is the quasi-perceptual state of consciousness in which the mind appears to be able to create sensory-like experience. It is often cited as having a crucial role in creative thought; it is often associated with successful acts and performances across a wide range of creative tasks, including the development of scientific models, the conceptualization of architectural design, and the aspects of everyday problem-solving. Despite its assumed role in creative thought, its exact contribution remains a debated issue. This chapter outlines some of the anecdotal evidence that supports the link between imagery and creative thought. It also reviews evidence garnered from a number of experimental studies that have examined the use of imagery under controlled conditions. It also discusses the extent to which representational theories of imagery have failed to directly account for the phenomenology that is associated with imagery.

A Module for Metaphor? The Site of Imagination in the Architecture of the Mind

Contemporary psychology claims an influential position that suggests that the mind is made-up of constellations of domain-specific, specialized computational mechanisms. Controversy remains on how integrative cognitive processes such as imagination fit into this suggested architecture of mind. This chapter considers some of the three possible conceptualizations of imagination. The first conceptualization purports imagination as an operation of the domain-general central process in a Fodorian mind. The second suggests imagination is an operation of a specialized module in a massively modular mind, and the third conceptualization asserts imagination as a product of low binding selectivity in Clark Barrett’s ‘cogzyme’ mind. Of the three conceptualizations, the last one is the most promising, as the key to the imagination seems to be the mapping of meaningful representations between dissimilar cognitive domains. Imagination is thus a consequence of the incomplete insulation between parallel specialized processes. Such de-insulation initiates novelty and innovation but it also allows possible delusional beliefs and psychotic illnesses. Like evolutionary development, imagination has benefits and costs as well.

Specialized Inference Engines as Precursors of Creative Imagination?

The human imagination is often thought of as creativity and originality. It is often considered in terms of its high-end, creative products such as religion, arts, and literature. However, the human imagination does not solely produce flights of creative fancy. It is also involved in the production of highly stable and fairly predictable representations of possible situations. This chapter discusses the humble imaginations of the human mind which are generally automatic and largely unconscious, yet are crucial to the formation of representations of what is to happen. This imagination is the construction of ‘what if’ which aids in the prediction of possible outcomes. The focus of this chapter is on specialized inference engines which are believed to be vehicles of creative imagination. Examples are provided in this chapter to illustrate the specialized ‘what if’ inferential systems of the human mind.