The Biology of the Imagination

[Summer/Fall 2007 - Entelechy - By Simon Baron-Cohen] In what sense might something as intrinsically human as the imagination be biological? How could the products of the imagination -- a novel, a painting, a sonata, a theory -- be thought of as the result of biological matter? After all, such artifacts are what culture is made of. So why invoke biology? In this essay, I will argue that the content of the imagination is of course determined more by culture than biology. But the capacity to imagine owes more to biology than culture. More