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Image: Three Inquiries in Technology and Imagination (TRIOS)
by Thomas A. Carlson Mark C. Taylor Mary-Jane RubensteinThe three essays in Image, written by leading philosophers of religion, explore the modern power of the visual at the intersection of the human and the technological. Modern life is steeped in images, image-making, and attempts to control the world through vision. Mastery of images has been advanced by technologies that expand and reshape vision and enable us to create, store, transmit, and display images. The three essays in Image, written by leading philosophers of religion Mark C. Taylor, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, and Thomas A. Carlson, explore the power of the visual at the intersection of the human and the technological. Building on Heidegger’s notion that modern humanity aims to master the world by picturing or representing the real, they investigate the contemporary culture of the image in its philosophical, religious, economic, political, imperial, and military dimensions, challenging the abstraction, anonymity, and dangerous disconnection of contemporary images. Taylor traces a history of capitalism, focusing on its lack of humility, particularly in the face of mortality, and he considers art as a possible way to reconnect us to the earth. Through a genealogy of iconic views from space, Rubenstein exposes the delusions of conquest associated with extraterrestrial travel. Starting with the pressing issues of surveillance capitalism and facial recognition technology, Carlson extends Heidegger’s analysis through a meditation on the telematic elimination of the individual brought about by totalizing technologies. Together, these essays call for a consideration of how we can act responsibly toward the past in a way that preserves the earth for future generations. Attending to the fragility of material things and to our own mortality, they propose new practices of imagination grounded in love and humility.
Images Of The Feminine In Gnosticism (Studies In Antiquity And Christianity)
by Karen L. KingIn this groundbreaking collection of essays, King and other contributors engage in a systematic study of issues of gender in Gnosticism. Using a variety of critical methods, the writers ask questions such as: What is the relationship of gendered images to the real lives of women and men? Did ascetic or libertine practices offer an attractive alternative to women in a patriarchal society? Are the images of strong, female goddesses, saviors, and heroines an indication Gnosticism would have been attractive to women? Is it plausible that women in some gnostic groups were authors, teachers, and leaders? Is it possible that some of the Gnostic texts we possess were written by women? What parts did women play in ritual? Did asceticism or libertinism have a different set of social functions for women than for men? These lucid essays offer significant insights into the cultural context and religious practices of Gnosticism.
Images as Data for Social Science Research: An Introduction to Convolutional Neural Nets for Image Classification (Elements in Quantitative and Computational Methods for the Social Sciences)
by John D. Wilkerson Nora Webb Williams Andreu CasasImages play a crucial role in shaping and reflecting political life. Digitization has vastly increased the presence of such images in daily life, creating valuable new research opportunities for social scientists. We show how recent innovations in computer vision methods can substantially lower the costs of using images as data. We introduce readers to the deep learning algorithms commonly used for object recognition, facial recognition, and visual sentiment analysis. We then provide guidance and specific instructions for scholars interested in using these methods in their own research.
Images of Anarchy
by Ioannis D. EvrigenisHobbes's concept of the natural condition of mankind became an inescapable point of reference for subsequent political thought, shaping the theories of emulators and critics alike, and has had a profound impact on our understanding of human nature, anarchy, and international relations. Yet, despite Hobbes's insistence on precision, the state of nature is an elusive concept. Has it ever existed and, if so, for whom? Hobbes offered several answers to these questions, which taken together reveal a consistent strategy aimed at providing his readers with a possible, probable, and memorable account of the consequences of disobedience. This book examines the development of this powerful image throughout Hobbes's works, and traces its origins in his sources of inspiration. The resulting trajectory of the state of nature illuminates the ways in which Hobbes employed a rhetoric of science and a science of rhetoric in his relentless pursuit of peace.
Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962-1988)
by Jacopo GalimbertiThe first overview of the unique encounter between artists and the prominent Marxist current Workerism, also known as OperaismoDuring the 1960s and 1970s, Workerism and Autonomia were prominent Marxist currents. However, it is rarely acknowledged that these movements inspired many visual artists such as the members of Archizoom, Gordon Matta-Clark and Gianfranco Baruchello. This book focuses on the aesthetic and cultural discourse developed by three generations of militants (including Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri, Bifo and Silvia Federici), and how it was appropriated by artists, architects, graphic designers and architectural historians such as Manfredo Tafuri. Images of Classsignposts key moments of this dialogue, ranging from the drawings published on classe operaia to Potere Operaio&’s exhibition in Paris, the Metropolitan Indians&’ zines, a feminist art collective who adhered to the Wages for Housework Campaign, and the N group&’s experiments with Gestalt theory. Featuring more than 140 images of artworks, many published here for the first time, this volume provides an original perspective on post-war Italian culture and new insights into some of the most influential Marxist movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries worldwide.
Images of England Through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock 'n' Roll, 1955-1976
by Keith GildartDrawing on archival sources and oral testimony, Keith Gildart examines the ways in which popular music played an important role in reflecting and shaping social identities and working-class cultures and - through a focus on rock 'n' roll, rhythm & blues, punk, mod subculture, and glam rock - created a sense of crisis in English society.
Images of Europe: The Union between Federation and Separation (Law and Visual Jurisprudence #4)
by Francesco Mangiapane Tiziana MiglioreThis book deals with the fundamental semantics of images of Europe, which consist of valences, mirror beliefs and affectivities. This is why it relaunches the importance of the European discourse in its symbolic dimension. As such, it explores the many images of Europe, or rather the many images through which European discourse is actually constituted in daily life, in search of their enunciative responsibility in today’s world for determining the current “State of the Union”. The identity of the European continent is based on a millenary tension between universalism and particularism: images of Europe have in fact been alternately inspired, over the centuries, by a model of homogeneity – Roman and Carolingian imperial disposition – on the one hand, and by a model of fragmentation – a Europe of city-states, municipalities, regions and small fatherlands – on the other. In the European Union, a political and economic organism, this issue has recently been amplified to the point that it has reentered public debate, and political parties that are only recognizable for being Europeanists or anti-Europeanists are now ubiquitous. In this regard, one major bone of contention is how to portray the quintessential aspects of the European territory, which are either interpreted as “thresholds” to be overcome in the name of a model of United Europe – “integral totality” – or are instead regarded as insurmountable obstacles for a Europe that is irreparably and perhaps, according to anti-Europeanists, fortunately fragmented – “partitive totality”. Further, this is to be done without excluding the possibility of contradictory and complementary solutions to these binary visions. In this context the book analyzes various texts in order to obtain a more precise picture of the clash, reveal its semiotic forms, and by doing so, identify a way out of the crisis.
Images of Schoolteachers in America
by Gail E. Burnaford Pamela Bolotin JosephThis book explores images of schoolteachers in America from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, using a wide range of approaches to scholarship and writing. It is intended for both experienced and aspiring teachers to use as a springboard for discussion and reflection about the teaching profession and for contemplating these questions: What does it mean to be a teacher? What has influenced and sustained our beliefs about teachers? New in the second edition * The focus is shifted to the teaching profession as the 21st century unfolds. * The volume continues to explore teacher images through various genres--oral history, narrative, literature, and popular culture. In the second edition, the authors place more emphasis on the social-political context that has shaped teachers' daily experiences and the teaching profession itself. In the study of teacher images and schooling, the essays draw from feminist research methods and the critical tradition in educational inquiry to probe issues of power and authority, race, social class, and gender. * The emphasis is on the multidimensionality of teacher images rather than normative characterizations. * Six totally new chapters have been written for this new edition: an "invented interview" spanning 100 years of school teaching; portraits of progressive activist teachers; an exploration of teachers in fiction for young adults; a retrospective of the satirical cartoon show, The Simpsons; a study of crusading and caring teachers in films; and an overview of progressive classroom practices in "the new millennium." Seven chapters have been thoroughly revised to reflect current scholarship and the authors' evolving knowledge and interests.
Images of the Economy of Nature, 1650-1930: From "Nature’s War" to Darwin’s "Struggle for Life" (Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development #7)
by Antonello La VergataThe book discusses ideas concerning the order and balance of nature (or "economy of nature") from the late 17th century to the early 20th century. The perspective taken is broad, longue durée and interdisciplinary, and reveals the interplay of scientific, philosophical, moral and social ideas. The story begins with natural theology (dating roughly to the onset of the so-called Newtonian Revolution) and ends with the First World War. The cut-off date has been chosen for the following reasons: the war changed the state of things, affecting man’s way of looking at, and relating to, nature both directly and indirectly; indeed, it put an end to most applications of Darwinism to society and history, including interpretations of war as a form of the struggle for existence. The author presents an overview of the different images of nature that were involved in these debates, especially in the late 19th century, when a large part of the scientific community paid lip service to ‘Darwinism’, while practically each expert felt free to interpret it in his own distinct way. The book also touches on the so-called ‘social Darwinism’, which was neither a real theory, nor a common body of ideas, and its various views of society and nature’s economy. Part of this book deals with the persistence of moralizing images of nature in the work of many authors. One of the main features of the book is its wealth of (detailed) quotations. In this way the author gives the reader the opportunity to see the original statements on which the author bases his discussion. The author privileges the analysis of different positions over a historiography offering a merely linear narrative based on general implications of ideas and theories. To revisit the concept of the so-called "Darwinian Revolution", we need to examine the various perspectives of scientists and others, their language and, so to speak, the lenses they used when reading "facts" and theories. The book ends with some general reflections on Darwin and Darwinisms (the plural is important) as a case study on the relationship between intellectual history, the history of science and contextual history.Written by a historian, this book really gives new, multidisciplinary perspectives on the "Darwinian Revolution."
Images of the Present Time (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)
by Alain BadiouAlain Badiou began the twenty-first century by considering the relationship between philosophy and notions of “the present.” In this period of his ongoing annual lecture series, the acclaimed philosopher took up the existential problem of how to be contemporary with one’s own time—that is, how to not simply inhabit a passing moment but bring a real present into existence.Images of the Present Time presents nearly three years of Badiou’s seminars, held from 2001 to 2004, partly against the backdrop of the war in Iraq. Given while Badiou was writing Logics of Worlds, the second of the three volumes of Being and Event, these lectures address some of the same questions of existence in a particular world in a more personal and conversational tone, with reference to literature, philosophy, and contemporary politics and culture. He proposes a new concept of living in a real present as the twisting together of something from the past and something of the future.Featuring some of the philosopher’s most inspiring and approachable work, Images of the Present Time is an important book for all readers interested in the practical as well as conceptual possibilities of Badiou’s thought.
Images: Their Structure And Content (New Problems of Philosophy)
by John V. KulvickiThe nature of representation is a central topic in philosophy. This is the first book to connect problems with understanding representational artifacts, like pictures, diagrams, and inscriptions, to the philosophies of science, mind, and art. Can images be a source of knowledge? Are images merely conventional signs, like words? What is the relationship between the observer and the observed? In this clear and stimulating introduction to the problem John V. Kulvicki explores these questions and more. He discusses: the nature of pictorial experience and "seeing in" recognition, resemblance, pretense, and structural theories of depiction images as aids to scientific discovery and understanding mental imagery and the nature of perceptual content photographs as visual prostheses. In so doing he assesses central problems in the philosophy of images, such as how objects we make come to represent other things, and how we distinguish kinds of representation - pictures, diagrams, graphs - from one another. Essential reading for students and professional philosophers alike, the book also contains chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary.
Imaginal Politics
by Chiara BotticiBetween the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh insight into the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language.
Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary (New Directions in Critical Theory #68)
by Chiara BotticiBetween the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language.
Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality
by Moira GatensMoira Gatens investigates the ways in which differently sexed bodies can occupy the same social or political space. Representations of sexual difference have unacknowledged philosophical roots which cannot be dismissed as a superficial bias on the part of the philosopher, nor removed without destroying the coherence of the philosophical system concerned. The deep structural bias against women extends beyond metaphysics and its effects are felt in epistemology, moral, social and political theory. The idea of sexual difference is contextualised in Imaginary Bodies and traced through the history of philosophy. Using her work on Spinoza, Gatens develops alternative conceptions of power, new ways of conceiving women's embodiment and their legal, political and ethical status.
Imaginary Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions
by Marina YaguelloAn exploration of the practice of inventing languages, from speaking in tongues to utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics.In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics. She looks for imagined languages that are autonomous systems, complete unto themselves and meant for communal use; imaginary, and therefore unlike both natural languages and historically attested languages; and products of an individual effort to lay hold of language. Inventors of languages, Yaguello writes, are madly in love: they love an object that belongs to them only to the extent that they also share it with a community. Yaguello investigates the sources of imaginary languages, in myths, dreams, and utopias. She takes readers on a tour of languages invented in literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, including that in More&’s Utopia, Leibniz&’s &“algebra of thought,&” and Bulwer-Lytton&’s linguistic fiction. She examines the linguistic fantasies (or madness) of Georgian linguist Nikolai Marr and Swiss medium Hélène Smith; and considers the quest for the true philosophical language. Yaguello finds two abiding (and somewhat contradictory) forces: the diversity of linguistic experience, which stands opposed to unifying endeavors, and, on the other hand, features shared by all languages (natural or not) and their users, which justifies the universalist hypothesis. Recent years have seen something of a boom in invented languages, whether artificial languages meant to facilitate international communication or imagined languages constructed as part of science fiction worlds. In Imaginary Languages (an updated and expanded version of the earlier Les Fous du langage, published in English as Lunatic Lovers of Language), Yaguello shows that the invention of language is above all a passionate, dizzying labor of love.
Imagination
by E. J. FurlongFirst published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Imagination
by Mary WarnockImagination is an outstanding contribution to a notoriously elusive and confusing subject. It skillfully interrelates problems in philosophy, the history of ideas and literary theory and criticism, tracing the evolution of the concept of imagination from Hume and Kant in the eighteenth century to Ryle, Sartre and Wittgenstein in the twentieth. She strongly belies that the cultivation of imagination should be the chief aim of education and one of her objectives in writing the book has been to put forward reasons why this is so. Purely philosophical treatment of the concept is shown to be related to its use in the work of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who she considers to be the creators of a new kind of awareness with more than literary implications. The purpose of her historical account is to suggest that the role of imagination in our perception and thought is more pervasive than may at first sight appear, and that the thread she traces is an important link joining apparently different areas of our experience. She argues that imagination is an essential element in both our awareness of the world and our attaching of value to it.
Imagination and Creative Thinking (Elements in Philosophy of Mind)
by Amy KindThis Element explores the nature of both imagination and creative thinking in an effort to understand the relation between them and also to understand their role in the vast array of activities in which they are typically implicated, from art, music, and literature to technology, medicine, and science. Focusing on the contemporary philosophical literature, it will take up several interrelated questions: What is imagination, and how does it fit into the cognitive architecture of the mind? What is creativity? Is imagination required for creativity? Is creativity required for imagination? Is a person simply born either imaginative or not (and likewise, either creative or not), or are imagination and creativity skills that can be cultivated? And finally, are imagination and creativity uniquely human capacities, or can they be had by nonbiological entities such as AI systems?
Imagination and Critique
by James R. NolandThis project is the result of a philosopher's extended engagement with the literature and practice of political science and public policy formation. One finds in these fields, and in social science generally, two fundamentally opposed approaches to inquiry into the nature and cause of historical political events. These two approaches, which are sometimes employed simultaneously, are both powerful and persuasive. Yet, the two accounts are incompatible and comprehensive. Making a choice between the two is not simply about choosing a view of history; the choice affects how one anticipates policy developments in the future, and, more importantly, how one seeks to influence and shape public policy now and in the years to come. Because there is no external standard of history by which to judge them, one must examine the conceptions of human nature, reason and freedom underlying each in order to adjudicate between the two. Following Alasdair MacIntyre's approach in Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, this book analyzes and evaluates the internal coherence and ultimate viability of the two fundamental versions of historical inquiry. Intended not only for philosophers but also for students and practitioners of political science and public policy, the book includes a case study of a particularly significant political development in U.S. history- the ratification of the 16th Amendment- and suggests some specific implications of the philosophical conclusions.
Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of Thoreau (Politics, Literature, and Film)
by Joshua J. Bowman<p>Imagination and Environmental Political Thought: The Aftermath of Thoreau seeks to correct oversimplified readings of Henry David Thoreau’s political thought by elucidating a key tension within his imagination. With the celebration of Thoreau’s two-hundredth birthday now past, this study outlines, and builds on, his own understanding of imagination and considers its implications for environmental politics. Despite the use of the word, “aftermath,” Thoreau’s legacy for environmental political thought is primarily constructive and foundational for modern environmentalism. <p>Thoreau’s virtues and vices have been inherited by his environmentally-conscious readers. The author of Walden’s preference for an abstract, ahistorical “higher law,” his radical concept of autonomy, and his frustration with government and community foster an impractical political thought characteristic of an idyllic imagination. Nevertheless, Thoreau demonstrates a more prudential and moral imagination by emphasizing the inescapable relationship between the moral order of individuals and the order of political communities and by pioneering the central questions of humanity’s relationship to non-human nature. Can this tension of imaginations be resolved? What are the consequences of this tension? <p>Thoreau’s overall vision ultimately creates significant problems with which environmentalists still struggle. While Thoreau’s emphasis on freedom and the immaterial aspects of human and non-human nature are of considerable value, his abstract political morality, misanthropy and escapism must be resisted both for the sake of environmental well-being and human dignity. <p>In addition, this book is an exercise in re-thinking how the humanities may provide scholars critical insights to better diagnose and respond to the environmental challenges of our time.</p>
Imagination and Experience: Philosophical Explorations (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
by Íngrid Vendrell Ferran Christiana WernerThis volume brings together two philosophical research areas that have been subject to increased attention: work regarding the unique character of having an experience and studies on the nature and powers of imagination. The importance of imagination seems to stand in tension with the assumed unique and irreplaceable role of experience in our lives. However, new arguments in various philosophical debates suggest that there is a need to examine how both areas of research interrelate and can enrich one another. The chapters in this volume examine whether the traditional accounts of experience and imagination need to be challenged. They are divided into thematic sections that discuss epistemological, ontological, normative, phenomenological, and intersubjective questions related to experience and imagination.Imagination and Experience is an essential resource for scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of psychology.
Imagination and Invention (Univocal)
by Gilbert SimondonA radical rethinking of the theory and the experience of mental images Here, in English translation for the first time, is Gilbert Simondon&’s fundamental reconception of the mental image and the theory of imagination and invention. Drawing on a vast range of mid-twentieth-century theoretical resources—from experimental psychology, cybernetics, and ethology to the phenomenological reflections of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty—Imagination and Invention provides a comprehensive account of the mental image and adds a vital new dimension to the theory of psychical individuation in Simondon&’s earlier, highly influential work.Simondon traces the development of the mental image through four phases: first a bundle of motor anticipations, the image becomes a cognitive system that mediates the organism&’s relation to its milieu, then a symbolic and abstract integration of motor and affective experience to, finally, invention, a solution to a problem of life that requires the externalization of the mental image and the creation of a technical object. An image cannot be understood from the perspective of one phase alone, he argues, but only within the trajectory of its progressive metamorphosis.
Imagination and Social Perspectives: Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology (Routledge Research in Phenomenology)
by Thomas Fuchs Michela Summa Luca VanzagoOur experience of other individuals as minded beings goes hand in hand with the awareness that they have a unique epistemic and emotional perspective on the experienced objects and situations. The same object can be seen from many different points of view, an event can awaken different emotional reactions in different individuals, and our position-takings can in part be mediated by our belonging to some social or cultural groups. All these phenomena can be described by referring to the metaphor of perspective. Assuming that there are different, and irreducible, perspectives we can take on the experienced world, and on others as experiencing the same world, the phenomenon of mutual understanding can consistently be understood in terms of perspectival flexibility. This edited volume investigates the different processes in which perspectival flexibility occurs in social life and particularly focuses on the constitutive role of imagination in such processes. It includes original works in philosophy and psychopathology showing how perspectival flexibility and social cognition are grounded on the interplay of direct perception and imagination.
Imagination and the Imaginary
by Kathleen LennonThe concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary, Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde.
Imagination and the University
by Henry Steele Commager Gordon W. Allport Jacob Bronowski Paul H. BuckThis volume, the Frank Gerstein Lectures for 1963, is the second series of Invitation Lectures to be delivered at York University. The theme "Imagination and the University" was appropriate for, as President Murray Ross states in this Foreword, it is in its early years that a university is sufficiently flexible to utilize imagination in its structure and in its curriculum. York University was in its third year when the Lectures were given.Four distinguished scholars present their views on the importance of an imaginative approach to the different academic disciplines, and to the conduct of life in contemporary society as a whole.Jacob Bronowski, speaking on Imagination in Art and Science, draws a clear and striking analogy between the role of imagination in mathematics and in poetry, drawing on his own experiences and contributions in both areas. He stresses that all creative works in art or science, must conform to the universal experience of mankind and to the private experiences of each man: the work of science, as of art, moves us profoundly, in mind and in emotion, when it matches our experience and at the same time points beyond it.Henry Steele Commager shows how important is the contribution to be made by an imaginative approach to politics, where, as in other fields of human experience, it must not be separated from reality, if it is to find expression in something more than words. He points to examples from the past and the present and asks for more imagination in public thinking, it fit our actions to the reality of change, citing the urgency of such twentieth-century phenomena as the status of Communist China, the predicted population explosion, and the threat of nuclear war. Professor Commager believes that the universities provide the key to this kind of approach, being a supreme example of the creative capacity of mankind, whose function it is to serve the commonwealth of learning.A different kind of insight is offered by Gordon W. Allport, whose subject is Imagination in Psychology. He believes that the present "impertinence" of psychology can best be cured by endowing it with more imagination. He demands a pluralistic approach to psychological investigation, which would not deny the insights yielded by traditional methods, with their characteristic minute analyses, but whose goal would be to fashion a conception of the human person that would exclude nothing that is valid, and at the same time preserve an ideal of rational consistency. This could lead, in turn, to a clear definition of the root motives of mankind, even to discovering new formulas for international peace by offsetting particularistic political demands. Finally, Paul H. Buck describes the Harvard House Plan as an example of Imagination and the Curriculum. This plan, modelled on the Oxford-Cambridge College system which is also followed in some Canadian universities, is an attempt to make all aspects of undergraduate life a process of education. And a truly liberal education for today and tomorrow, Professor Buck is confident, will combine a programme of general education, a programme of specialism, and a collegiate way of living.