Idea for December 2024: imagination science

This idea comes from my friends at 8th Day, the strategy consultancy that combines insight and innovation.

And it’s fascinating: an emerging science that aims to understand the full meaning of ‘imagination’. This isn’t just the faculty that makes things up, important though that it.

Imagination is the way we understand the world. As 8th Day says, it’s ‘how we visualize thoughts, simulate scenarios, and interpret our surroundings’.

Talking to my students last month, 8th Day’s Stu Enticknap argued: ‘We don’t perceive the world, we generate it’.

Interesting to compare this with gen AI - which (you could argue) generates stuff not by imagination but by guesswork.

Hopefully Stu will be presenting their work at the first ever SXSW in London next year. If you like the idea, vote for it here.

The image is from this year’s Christmas at Holkham Hall, and reminds me of John Donne’s wonderful phrase ‘At the round earth’s imagined corners’…