Engendering a multiverse through imagining

Being a Poem in the Making (Part #8)

Imagination as fundamental to science and art: The argument above is suggestive of the fundamental nature of the process of imagining. This is usefully highlighted at one extreme by astrophysics and cosmology in exploring hypotheses regarding the nature, shape, mutiplicity and origins of the (multi)verse. The variety of their imaginings is indicated by John D. Barrow (The Book of Universes, 2012) and by Ruediger Vaas (Time before Time: classifications of universes in contemporary cosmology, and how to avoid the antinomy of the beginning and eternity of the world. Bild.Wiss., 2004). At the other extreme are the imaginings of poets, of which examples are offered above. These can be associated with those of the arts more generally.

Stephen Hawking and colleagues (arxiv.org/abs/1205.3807) have shown that the universe may have the same surreal geometry as some of art's most mind-boggling images (Lisa Grossman, Hawking's 'Escher-verse' could be theory of everything, New Scientist, 9 June 2012). Their results rely on a mathematical twist previously considered impossible, namely the use of a negative cosmological constant rather than a positive one. The new approach provides a description of "all the possible universes that could have been -- including ones in which the solar system never formed, or in which life might have evolved quite differently". Making conventional use of a positive cosmological constant, it had proven impossible to describe universes that were "anything more than clunky approximations to reality." A plethora of universes have now been generated from wave functions with negative cosmological constants.

Nature of imagination: The issue might then be the nature of "imagination" and by whom it is to be defined and for whom. Provocatively, how might its nature be imagined? Corresponding to that question, what are "universes" -- whether for cosmologists or poets -- and how might they be imagined elsewhere? Science would readily respond that there is a "logic" to the elaboration of its hypotheses -- an incontrovertible logical consistency readily to be challenged by poets and in many cultures. Poets could well respond in kind. Such "logic" can however be called into question by the fantastically, paradoxical and improbable nature of the imaginings of cosmologists. The imaginings of both can be compared with those of the many religions -- deriving from a contrasting sense of authority, readily contested in its turn, most notably by other religions.

What matters? There is a further question, namely what "matters" and how is that to be understood? Ironically the "matter" that matters is most clearly (and imaginatively) defined by astrophysics and is central to their imaginings regarding the nature of any universe, although called into question (in dark matter) by its mysterious relation to energy and even information. What matters to a poet, or to others -- and how is this (imaginatively) determined wherever? The corresponding concern for both extremes is what is "irrelevant" -- and to whom? In this respect of particular interest is the nature and experience of "nothing" -- whether as of current interest to astrophysics or with respect to the experiential despair of the poetically inclined (cf. Sten F. Odenwald, Patterns in the Void: why nothing is important, 2002). This framework has been explored separately (Emerging Significance of Nothing, 2012; Configuring the Varieties of Experiential Nothingness, 2012; Where There is No Time and Nothing Matters, 2008; Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering, 2008).

Evoked in this way, there is a sense common to both cosmology and poetics that universes of meaningful coherence -- a multiverse? -- may be engendered from nothing. More mysterious, and far less evident, is the nature of the engendering process and how that capacity can be enabled or elicited. It is readily suggested that some experience life as on an imaginative flatland -- or may be so perceived by others. For others experience is imbued with subtle complexities -- possibly threatening.

Varieties of imagination: Tamar Gendler, in providing a useful overview of the nature of "imagination" for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011), stresses the diversity of understandings precluding any satisfactory taxonomy. This is exemplified by the argument of John H. Simpson (Varieties of Imagination and Nothingness in the Global Village, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2003) which focuses on the post 9/11 context.

Gendler cites as the only recent attempt at a somewhat comprehensive inventory of the use of imagination as being that by Leslie Stevenson (Twelve Conceptions of Imagination, British Journal of Aesthetics, 2003), who enumerates (without claiming exhaustiveness) twelve of "the most influential conceptions of imagination" that can be found in recent discussions in "philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, poetry and... religion":

ability to think of something that is not presently perceived, but is, was or will be spatio-temporally real.
ability to think of whatever one acknowledges as possible in the spatio-temporal world.
liability to think of something which the subject believes to be real, but which is not real.
ability to think of things one conceives of as fictional, as opposed to what one believes to be real, or conceives of as possibly real.
ability to entertain mental images
ability to think of (conceive of, or represent) anything at all
non-rational operations of the mind, that is, those kinds of mental functioning which are explicable in terms of causes rather than reasons.
ability to form beliefs, on the basis of perception, about public objects in three-dimensional space which can exist unperceived, with spatial parts and temporal duration.
sensuous component in the appreciation of works of art or objects of natural beauty without classifying them under concepts or thinking of them as practically useful.
ability to create works of art that encourage such sensuous appreciation.
ability to appreciate things that are expressive or revelatory of the meaning of human life.
ability to create works of art that express something deep about the meaning of human life, as opposed to the products of mere fantasy.

Enabling world-making: Imagination is especially significant in the sense of "world-making" -- effectively the process whereby a "universe" of meaning is created by an individual or a group -- as discussed separately (Imaginal Education: game playing, science fiction, language, art and world-making, 2003).

It is also of considerable significance to strategic insight (Imagining the Real Challenge and Realizing the Imaginal Pathway of Sustainable Transformation, 2007; Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present, 2012).

Navigation between alternative realities: If a multiverse is to be understood as a set or configuration of alternative realities, the possibilities of movement between them can be imaginatively explored -- or "inplored". Science fiction has done much with respect to the first. Other clues are offered with respect to the second, notably from some spiritual disciplines and the tendency to recognize a multiplicity of "heavens" (cf. Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002).

Such indications challenge the credibility of connectivity fundamental to "transportation" between different cognitive realms, as conventionally understood and separately discussed (Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects, 2006; Climbing Elven Stairways: DNA as a macroscopic metaphor of polarized psychodynamics, 2007; Towards an Astrophysics of the Knowledge Universe: from astronautics to noonautics?, 2006).

Imaginative interaction in the moment: There is a poetical and existential charm associated with the movement of eyes and eye-contact -- repeatedly a focus of romantic literature down the centuries, and now reinforced by the cosmetics and fashion industries. It is fundamental to processes of communication in the moment and enabling emergence of the potential of the future (cf. Future Generation through Global Conversation: in quest of collective well-being through conversation in the present moment, 1997). The requirement for eye-contact has been advanced as a (dubious) justification for banning the burkha -- in order to be able to "see into a person's soul".

The communication achieved through eye-contact can be seen as intimately related to the inspiration enabled by the Muses through the variety of arts, especially in the playful process of flirtation or that of eliciting respect. Speculatively it may even be "inplored" as a key to the Ouroboros as a "stargate" -- or even as an array of stargates keyed by the hexagrams of the I Ching (cf. People as Stargates: an alternative perspective on human relationships in space-time, 1996).

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Engendering a multiverse through imagining