THE SHAPE OF THINGS UNSEEN – A NEW SCIENCE OF IMAGINATION
John and Ann Cumming Lecture
We sometimes think of imagination as confined to poetry and painting. Not so, says Prof. Adam Zeman of the Universities of Exeter and Edinburgh: it is something that we all use constantly – “whenever we reminisce about the past or anticipate the future, whenever we plan or daydream, whenever we enter the worlds created by art or science.”
He draws on research in neuroscience and child development and in the study of human origins, to show that the human brain is “above all else a creative, imaginative organ – and that we have evolved to share what we imagine.”
Adam Zeman will be sharing the narration for the concert On Memory this evening in the Orkney Theatre at 7.30 pm, with a work by composer J. Harry Whalley performed by Orkney Camerata String Quartet and soprano Hannah Firth.
“The truth is we live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works.” – Prof. Adam Zeman
“Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds, by means of what are commonly termed par excellence the exact sciences, may then with the fair white wings of Imagination hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.” – Ada Lovelace, 5 January 1841
