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Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions

  • Alejandra Wah
Published/Copyright: February 13, 2021
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Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture
From the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture Volume 3 Issue 2

Abstract

Elsewhere I have argued that particular degrees of imagination and consciousness, a cog­nitive process that I call reflective imagination, distinguish humans from other species and make possible, and underlie, the artistic experience. I take the artistic experience to be the universal and characteristically human capacity to experience oneself or others in a story by means of music, dance, song, pantomime, drawing, pretend play, or spoken or written language. In this paper I reconstruct the developmental path of the reflective imagina­tion via the artistic experience in five stages: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence, and its plausible evolutionary trajectory from Australopithecines to Homo sapiens. Drawing upon both evolutionary and developmental theory, I conclude that the reflective imagination via the artistic experience has fulfilled, and still fulfills, important functions by activating memory systems, regulating emotional expression, promoting mutuality, training attentional focus, developing motor control, enabling prediction, free­ing from actuality, sourcing identity, complexifying consciousness, and affording behav­ioral adaptation.

Keywords: artistic experience; reflective imagination; imagination; consciousness; evolution; development; functions
Published Online: 2021-02-13
Published in Print: 2019-12-01

© 2020 by Academic Studies Press

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Title
  2. Table of Contents
  3. ARTICLES
  4. Disney’s Shifting Visions of Villainy from the 1990s to the 2010s: A Biocultural Analysis
  5. The Viking and the Farmer: Alternative Male Life Histories Portrayed in the Romantic Poetry of Erik Gustaf Geijer
  6. Adapting a Witch to Modern Beliefs and Values: Persecuting the Outsider through Trial, Stage, and Film
  7. Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions
  8. REVIEW ESSAYS
  9. Six Recent Books on the Neuroscience of Creativity: Notes from the Underbelly
  10. Forays into the Dark Field of Evolutionary Horror Film Research: A Meagre Harvest
  11. BOOK REVIEWS
  12. Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
  13. Johannes Breuer, Daniel Pietschmann, Benny Liebold, and Bejamin P. Lange, eds. Evolutionary Psychology and Digital Games: Digital Hunter-Gatherers
  14. Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World
  15. Henrik Høgh-Olesen. The Aesthetic Animal
  16. Julie J. Lesnik. Edible Insects and Human Evolution
  17. Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick. Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law
  18. Randolph M. Nesse. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
  19. Neema Parvini. Shakespeare’s Moral Compass
  20. David Reich. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
  21. Tali Sharot. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
  22. Carol Cronin Weisfeld, Glenn E. Weisfeld, and Lisa Dillon, eds. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View
  23. Wojciech Załuski. Law and Evil: The Evolutionary Perspective
  24. Contributors
https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.3.2.143
Keywords for this article
artistic experience; reflective imagination; imagination; consciousness; evolution; development; functions

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Title
  2. Table of Contents
  3. ARTICLES
  4. Disney’s Shifting Visions of Villainy from the 1990s to the 2010s: A Biocultural Analysis
  5. The Viking and the Farmer: Alternative Male Life Histories Portrayed in the Romantic Poetry of Erik Gustaf Geijer
  6. Adapting a Witch to Modern Beliefs and Values: Persecuting the Outsider through Trial, Stage, and Film
  7. Reflective Imagination via the Artistic Experience: Evolutionary Trajectory, Developmental Path, and Possible Functions
  8. REVIEW ESSAYS
  9. Six Recent Books on the Neuroscience of Creativity: Notes from the Underbelly
  10. Forays into the Dark Field of Evolutionary Horror Film Research: A Meagre Harvest
  11. BOOK REVIEWS
  12. Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel. The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
  13. Johannes Breuer, Daniel Pietschmann, Benny Liebold, and Bejamin P. Lange, eds. Evolutionary Psychology and Digital Games: Digital Hunter-Gatherers
  14. Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. The Life of Imagination: Revealing and Making the World
  15. Henrik Høgh-Olesen. The Aesthetic Animal
  16. Julie J. Lesnik. Edible Insects and Human Evolution
  17. Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick. Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law
  18. Randolph M. Nesse. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
  19. Neema Parvini. Shakespeare’s Moral Compass
  20. David Reich. Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
  21. Tali Sharot. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals about Our Power to Change Others
  22. Carol Cronin Weisfeld, Glenn E. Weisfeld, and Lisa Dillon, eds. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View
  23. Wojciech Załuski. Law and Evil: The Evolutionary Perspective
  24. Contributors
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