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The Evolution of Imagination
Consider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or think of a comedy troupe riffing on a couple of cues from the audience until the whole room is erupting with laughter. Or maybe it’s a team of software engineers brainstorming their way to the next Google, or the Einsteins of the world code-cracking the mysteries of nature. Maybe it’s simply a child playing with her toys. What do all of these activities share? With wisdom, humor, and joy, philosopher Stephen T. Asma answers that question in this imagination. And from there he takes us on an extraordinary tour of the human creative spirit.
Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds.
Guided by neuroscience, animal behavior, evolution, philosophy, and psychology, Asma burrows deep into the human psyche to look right at the enigmatic but powerful engine that is our improvisational creativity—the source, he argues, of our remarkable imaginational capacity. How is it, he asks, that a story can evoke a whole world inside of us? How are we able to rehearse a skill, a speech, or even an entire scenario simply by thinking about it? How does creativity go beyond experience and help us make something completely new? And how does our moral imagination help us sculpt a better society? As he shows, we live in a world that is only partly happening in reality. Huge swaths of our cognitive experiences are made up by “what-ifs,” “almosts,” and “maybes,” an imagined terrain that churns out one of the most overlooked but necessary resources for our possibilities. Considering everything from how imagination works in our physical bodies to the ways we make images, from the mechanics of language and our ability to tell stories to the creative composition of self-consciousness, Asma expands our personal and day-to-day forms of imagination into a grand as one of the decisive evolutionary forces that has guided human development from the Paleolithic era to today. The result is an inspiring look at the rich relationships among improvisation, imagination, and culture, and a privileged glimpse into the unique nature of our evolved minds.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published June 21, 2017
44 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
About the author
Stephen T. Asma
27 books72 followersStephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, where he holds the title of Distinguished Scholar.
He is the author of "Why We Need Religion" (Oxford) and "Against Fairness" (University of Chicago Press), among others.
In 2003, he was Visiting Professor at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. There he taught "Buddhist Philosophy" as part of their pilot Graduate Program in Buddhist Studies. His book, entitled The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha (HarperOne, 2005) explores the Theravada Buddhism of the region. He has also traveled and studied in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Mainland China – eventually living in Shanghai China in 2005.
Asma is the author of several books: "Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums" (Oxford University Press, 2001), "Following Form and Function" (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996), and "Buddha for Beginners" (Hampton Roads, 2008). He has written many articles on a broad range of topics that bridge the humanities and sciences, including “Against Transcendentalism” in the book _Monty Python and Philosophy_ (Opencourt Press, 2006) and “Dinosaurs on the Ark: Natural History and the New Creation Museum” in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ (May, 2007). He has also written for the _Chicago Tribune_, _In These Times_ magazine, the _Skeptical Inquirer_, the _Chronicle Review_, _Skeptic magazine_, and Chicago Public Radio's news-magazine show _Eight-Forty-Eight_.
His wide-ranging natural history of monsters was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. In this book, titled "On Monsters," Asma tours Western culture's worst nightmares. And his book "Why I Am a Buddhist" was published by Hampton Roads Publishing in 2009.
He is the author of "Why We Need Religion" (Oxford) and "Against Fairness" (University of Chicago Press), among others.
In 2003, he was Visiting Professor at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. There he taught "Buddhist Philosophy" as part of their pilot Graduate Program in Buddhist Studies. His book, entitled The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha (HarperOne, 2005) explores the Theravada Buddhism of the region. He has also traveled and studied in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Mainland China – eventually living in Shanghai China in 2005.
Asma is the author of several books: "Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums" (Oxford University Press, 2001), "Following Form and Function" (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1996), and "Buddha for Beginners" (Hampton Roads, 2008). He has written many articles on a broad range of topics that bridge the humanities and sciences, including “Against Transcendentalism” in the book _Monty Python and Philosophy_ (Opencourt Press, 2006) and “Dinosaurs on the Ark: Natural History and the New Creation Museum” in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ (May, 2007). He has also written for the _Chicago Tribune_, _In These Times_ magazine, the _Skeptical Inquirer_, the _Chronicle Review_, _Skeptic magazine_, and Chicago Public Radio's news-magazine show _Eight-Forty-Eight_.
His wide-ranging natural history of monsters was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. In this book, titled "On Monsters," Asma tours Western culture's worst nightmares. And his book "Why I Am a Buddhist" was published by Hampton Roads Publishing in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2019
If you enjoy the unsettled, open-minded, and ambiguous in life, you are likely to take pleasure in this rigorous study of neuroscience and behavior. The author is the multifaceted scholar and philosophy and humanities prof that performs with some great musicians and composes as well. His thesis is that everything we think and do is grounded in improvisation and imagination. Unfortunately, he does not adequately acknowledge the role of the audience in performance.
February 14, 2020
This is a particularly good book for artists of all types to read. The author is a jazz musician, and themes of improvisation - which jazz thrives on - run through the work. But this book is in the main a deep and often well thought out exploration of imagination and creativity, with much to say about the evolution of the modern human mind.
The book is split into six chapters dealing with: the mental models we carry in our minds, how our bodies may be the source of creativity especially in music, visual improvisation and creativity, tale-telling, the self, and finally a section on imagination in the political world. Lots of fascinating ideas are put forward, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of them - for instance the role of the body in kick-starting imagination via music and rhythm, which some experts think may have preceded language. The author is particularly good at presenting ideas of how the emotions serve as a foundation for most of what we think and do.
I do have some reservations. The author separates "hot cognition" (emotion or feelings based cognition rooted in the limbic brain) with "cold cognition" (rational or logical thought rooted in the neocortex). While the description of the triune brain is useful, Asma leans too much upon it to separate two modes of cognition that really are merged into one, with emphasis vaying according to situation. I also think his guess that full language emerged only 40,000 years ago is way off the mark - 150,000 to 200,000 years ago is much more likely.
All in all, a very thought-provoking read from somebody in an interesting position and with lots to say. The first four chapters are superb, but the chapter on self is a bit of a mess, and the final chapter, while interesting, seems to me to be an afterthought.
The book is split into six chapters dealing with: the mental models we carry in our minds, how our bodies may be the source of creativity especially in music, visual improvisation and creativity, tale-telling, the self, and finally a section on imagination in the political world. Lots of fascinating ideas are put forward, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of them - for instance the role of the body in kick-starting imagination via music and rhythm, which some experts think may have preceded language. The author is particularly good at presenting ideas of how the emotions serve as a foundation for most of what we think and do.
I do have some reservations. The author separates "hot cognition" (emotion or feelings based cognition rooted in the limbic brain) with "cold cognition" (rational or logical thought rooted in the neocortex). While the description of the triune brain is useful, Asma leans too much upon it to separate two modes of cognition that really are merged into one, with emphasis vaying according to situation. I also think his guess that full language emerged only 40,000 years ago is way off the mark - 150,000 to 200,000 years ago is much more likely.
All in all, a very thought-provoking read from somebody in an interesting position and with lots to say. The first four chapters are superb, but the chapter on self is a bit of a mess, and the final chapter, while interesting, seems to me to be an afterthought.
February 3, 2026
A well-done book on a topic that has interested philosophers since Plato.
Stephen Asma has a rather eclectic background. He is a musician, and illustrator, and a philosopher with a number of books to his credit. Among his interests are Buddhism, a topic of a couple of those books.
His topic is the imagination. How did human imagination evolve, and what are the theories as to how it operates? He says that the evolutionary psychologist tend to take a fairly mechanistic, domain oriented view of the way humans solve problems. A typical mine circuit to them would be avoiding poisonous plants. Asma says that our improvising skills and imaginative powers almost certainly grow out of general intelligence, not specific modules.
Asma writes: "Books about creativity have tended to fall into one of three genres. On the one hand, there have been the breathless and overreaching feel-good paeans to famous entrepreneurs and successful CEO creatives. This kind of book is crammed with amusing but shallow factoids and over-interpreted fMRI studies, all wrapped in a vaguely inspirational glaze. Next, we have the how-to books that give artists a series of exercises to unblock their creative flow. These books are either therapeutic or instructive, or both, and seek to nurture the joy of our inner prodigy. The third genre is the impenetrable academic baffler, chock-full of erudite and cryptic references to Foucault and the hegemonic phallocentric horizon of being, but otherwise devoid of illumination." He wins me over right there, when he says he doesn't understand Foucault either.
He says in the introduction he will be leaning heavily on our primate ancestry to explain the way we are today. "Our intellect is a product and servant of our social life, and the improving imagination – our early intellect – gave us the behavioral/mental scaffolding to organize and manage our experiences long before words and concepts."
The book is organized around a jazz theme, as a jam session in six chapters. But what works in the jazz combo can just as easily be found among any other group dedicated to an activity such as diplomacy, hunting, or product development. Each chapter is divided between real-time, the event being discussed, and a discussion of the evolution of the abilities being discussed.
Here follow my reading notes on the first chapter.
ONE : The Second Universe
-----Counting Off
Asma leads off with the description of a Pleistocene hunting party. First he notes the human evolution required to throw a spear – a strong rest capable of twisting and the experience that tells the hunter where the animal is likely to go and how to throw the spear so that the animal and spear collide at the right moment.
Then, speaking of the group, he says that hunting party is by definition an improvisational activity. The hunters continually update their knowledge about the animals, weather and so on and make their best guess as to what will bring success.
-----Some Crucial Ingredients
Asma name some characteristics of improvisation, quickly adding that it is not a definition but merely characteristics. These are: spontaneity, intuitiveness, adaptivity, making do with deficient resources, natural or self-imposed disciplines, emergency or high-stakes conditions, and it is simultaneously performative and compositional.
For all that it is a matter of making it up on the spot, it is usually woven from a number of clichés, well-known moves that have only to be modified. Asma calls this functionally promiscuous.
The list of characteristics goes on: improvisation is flexible practice, involves the mixing or hybridization of frames (separate disciplines, like genres of music), humor, and emotion or affect.
Asma says that improvisation requires prerequisite "imaginative faculties." These are the basic mammalian complement of short and long-term memory, representational systems and social learning.
-----The Captain or the Muse?
Asma introduces a useful metaphor – and says it is nothing more than that. "The captain" would be a part of the brain that has executive control over the creative process, consciously selecting what to do and what not. "The Muse" would be an abandoning of executive control to simply let creativity flow through your consciousness.
Asma cautions us that these metaphors are not useful by themselves, but taken together they do emphasize two phases of the imaginative process.
-----Metaphysical Imagination
A discourse on monsters, and belief in same. Conjuring them up is a feat of imagination.
-----A Second Universe
The cross-fertilization that takes place in imagination. Borrowing metaphors from other contexts. The "counterfactual:" things that might be or might have been; the perfect reposite that you did not come up with when needed.
Question: do animals possess an ability to handle counterfactuals? Our humanoid ancestors? How and when did we acquire our powers of imagination?
Our ancestors made hand axes of knapped flint for a million years, during which time the design changed little. Did they have the ability to conceive the finished product in advance, or did they merely learn to copy existing axes? Imagination or rote?
When and how did we start to imagine things that could not be real? Asma shows the full-bodied (viz, obese) Venus of Willendorf. One calls to mind the beautifully exaggerated animal drawings in the caves of southern France.
Language facilitates imagination. Asma asks what it was like before our ancestors developed language, which most agree was only a couple hundred thousand years ago.
-----Philosophical Missteps
Asma refers to the philosophers suggesting that imagination is a middle faculty between our essential perceptions and our mind (the realm of concepts and judgments). Asma raises the objection that it is not a dichotomy, conceptual forms on one side and sensual perception on the other being brought together and matched in the mind. There is more going on in the middle than philosophers imagined.
-----You Are an Expert Improviser
Asma describes jazz improvisation as watching and listening very attentively to the leader of the session, taking subtle clues that indicate when a solo riff is coming, the change in key signature, or the end of the piece.
He offers another example, speaking a foreign language. When speaking to local people (Chinese for him, Ukrainians for me) you often get the drift of a conversation but not the whole thing. Rather than stop and ask them to get you back on track every time, you have to wing it and try to steer the conversation to something you will understand. As time goes by – all too slowly – you gradually become more adept at improvisation and also learn a bit of vocabulary.
Asma goes into other examples from business negotiation to emergency medicine. The key elements of improvisation, given above under the heading "crucial ingredients," apply to all of them.
That's my review through Chapter One. The remaining chapters, covered as comments, are:
TWO : The Creative Body
THREE : Drawing, Dreaming, and Visual Improvisation
FOUR : Spinning the Yarn
FIVE : Blowing Away the Self
SIX : The Politics of Imagination
It is a well-done book on a topic that has interested philosophers since Plato. It is hard to conceive of a better person to address the topic. Asma's final chapters deal with the current state of humanity and morality. He is an optimistic liberal, but not preachy about it. One may not agree in full, but his openness to discussion makes it all a pleasure to read.
Stephen Asma has a rather eclectic background. He is a musician, and illustrator, and a philosopher with a number of books to his credit. Among his interests are Buddhism, a topic of a couple of those books.
His topic is the imagination. How did human imagination evolve, and what are the theories as to how it operates? He says that the evolutionary psychologist tend to take a fairly mechanistic, domain oriented view of the way humans solve problems. A typical mine circuit to them would be avoiding poisonous plants. Asma says that our improvising skills and imaginative powers almost certainly grow out of general intelligence, not specific modules.
Asma writes: "Books about creativity have tended to fall into one of three genres. On the one hand, there have been the breathless and overreaching feel-good paeans to famous entrepreneurs and successful CEO creatives. This kind of book is crammed with amusing but shallow factoids and over-interpreted fMRI studies, all wrapped in a vaguely inspirational glaze. Next, we have the how-to books that give artists a series of exercises to unblock their creative flow. These books are either therapeutic or instructive, or both, and seek to nurture the joy of our inner prodigy. The third genre is the impenetrable academic baffler, chock-full of erudite and cryptic references to Foucault and the hegemonic phallocentric horizon of being, but otherwise devoid of illumination." He wins me over right there, when he says he doesn't understand Foucault either.
He says in the introduction he will be leaning heavily on our primate ancestry to explain the way we are today. "Our intellect is a product and servant of our social life, and the improving imagination – our early intellect – gave us the behavioral/mental scaffolding to organize and manage our experiences long before words and concepts."
The book is organized around a jazz theme, as a jam session in six chapters. But what works in the jazz combo can just as easily be found among any other group dedicated to an activity such as diplomacy, hunting, or product development. Each chapter is divided between real-time, the event being discussed, and a discussion of the evolution of the abilities being discussed.
Here follow my reading notes on the first chapter.
ONE : The Second Universe
-----Counting Off
Asma leads off with the description of a Pleistocene hunting party. First he notes the human evolution required to throw a spear – a strong rest capable of twisting and the experience that tells the hunter where the animal is likely to go and how to throw the spear so that the animal and spear collide at the right moment.
Then, speaking of the group, he says that hunting party is by definition an improvisational activity. The hunters continually update their knowledge about the animals, weather and so on and make their best guess as to what will bring success.
-----Some Crucial Ingredients
Asma name some characteristics of improvisation, quickly adding that it is not a definition but merely characteristics. These are: spontaneity, intuitiveness, adaptivity, making do with deficient resources, natural or self-imposed disciplines, emergency or high-stakes conditions, and it is simultaneously performative and compositional.
For all that it is a matter of making it up on the spot, it is usually woven from a number of clichés, well-known moves that have only to be modified. Asma calls this functionally promiscuous.
The list of characteristics goes on: improvisation is flexible practice, involves the mixing or hybridization of frames (separate disciplines, like genres of music), humor, and emotion or affect.
Asma says that improvisation requires prerequisite "imaginative faculties." These are the basic mammalian complement of short and long-term memory, representational systems and social learning.
-----The Captain or the Muse?
Asma introduces a useful metaphor – and says it is nothing more than that. "The captain" would be a part of the brain that has executive control over the creative process, consciously selecting what to do and what not. "The Muse" would be an abandoning of executive control to simply let creativity flow through your consciousness.
Asma cautions us that these metaphors are not useful by themselves, but taken together they do emphasize two phases of the imaginative process.
-----Metaphysical Imagination
A discourse on monsters, and belief in same. Conjuring them up is a feat of imagination.
-----A Second Universe
The cross-fertilization that takes place in imagination. Borrowing metaphors from other contexts. The "counterfactual:" things that might be or might have been; the perfect reposite that you did not come up with when needed.
Question: do animals possess an ability to handle counterfactuals? Our humanoid ancestors? How and when did we acquire our powers of imagination?
Our ancestors made hand axes of knapped flint for a million years, during which time the design changed little. Did they have the ability to conceive the finished product in advance, or did they merely learn to copy existing axes? Imagination or rote?
When and how did we start to imagine things that could not be real? Asma shows the full-bodied (viz, obese) Venus of Willendorf. One calls to mind the beautifully exaggerated animal drawings in the caves of southern France.
Language facilitates imagination. Asma asks what it was like before our ancestors developed language, which most agree was only a couple hundred thousand years ago.
-----Philosophical Missteps
Asma refers to the philosophers suggesting that imagination is a middle faculty between our essential perceptions and our mind (the realm of concepts and judgments). Asma raises the objection that it is not a dichotomy, conceptual forms on one side and sensual perception on the other being brought together and matched in the mind. There is more going on in the middle than philosophers imagined.
-----You Are an Expert Improviser
Asma describes jazz improvisation as watching and listening very attentively to the leader of the session, taking subtle clues that indicate when a solo riff is coming, the change in key signature, or the end of the piece.
He offers another example, speaking a foreign language. When speaking to local people (Chinese for him, Ukrainians for me) you often get the drift of a conversation but not the whole thing. Rather than stop and ask them to get you back on track every time, you have to wing it and try to steer the conversation to something you will understand. As time goes by – all too slowly – you gradually become more adept at improvisation and also learn a bit of vocabulary.
Asma goes into other examples from business negotiation to emergency medicine. The key elements of improvisation, given above under the heading "crucial ingredients," apply to all of them.
That's my review through Chapter One. The remaining chapters, covered as comments, are:
TWO : The Creative Body
THREE : Drawing, Dreaming, and Visual Improvisation
FOUR : Spinning the Yarn
FIVE : Blowing Away the Self
SIX : The Politics of Imagination
It is a well-done book on a topic that has interested philosophers since Plato. It is hard to conceive of a better person to address the topic. Asma's final chapters deal with the current state of humanity and morality. He is an optimistic liberal, but not preachy about it. One may not agree in full, but his openness to discussion makes it all a pleasure to read.
October 2, 2017
The main premise of The Evolution of Imagination is that the imagination was a form of thinking as powerful as language and even predating language in human evolution. Usually the imagination is relegated to second chair in terms of "thinking power", second to language and reason, but on its own it boasts a forceful mode of "thinking" in the face of a messy world. Imagination and improvisation are near synonymous, though the distinctions are laid out, as modes of navigating an ever-changing environment. Though the content is all relevant, the broadness of this topics is its downfall as it jumps from topic to topic and never seems to be going anywhere. A powerful thesis delivered thinly.
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December 29, 2020Interesting reflections on the early man and primates. Evolution based insights on the shaping of human imagination. Comparison with performance arts make sit very relatable. Though the writing is still a bit complex and is wanting on the front of being lucid.
April 11, 2021
A history of imagination and an analysis of the various ways in which it manifests. Some though-provoking ideas but the author covers too much ground in not enough depth to be completely satisfying.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews