Imagination

Imagination, that is the “power of forming images” is indispensable “in our ordinary, not just extraordinary beliefs and projects in science, philosophy, religion, and in common sense.” So argue philosophy Charles Taliaferro and artist Jil Evans in their recent Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination (Continuum Studies In Philosophy Of Religion) . They cite Susanne Langer in support. Langer argued, “Religious thought, whether savage or civilized, operates primarily with images . . . Images only, originally made us aware of the wholeness and over-all form of entities, acts and facts in the world; and little though we may know it, only an image can hold us to a conception of a total phenomenon, against which we can measure the adequacy of our scientific terms wherewith we describe it.”

Among other things, their emphasis on imagination provides a way of testing the coherence of various forms of naturalism. They ask of Darwinists, “can the emergence of aesthetic values (such as beauty and ugliness) be fully accounted for on naturalist grounds? . . . Can Darwinism and its successors account for the emergence of aesthetics, as well as consciousness?” Their answer is No.