Imagination and Invention
Imagination and Invention by Gilbert Simondon, published by University of Minnesota Press on January 17, 2023, is now available in English translation. This 204-page work presents a fundamental reconception of the mental image, exploring the theory of imagination and invention through a comprehensive lens. Simondon draws on a diverse array of mid-twentieth-century theoretical resources, including experimental psychology and phenomenological reflections, to provide insights into the nature of mental images and their role in psychical individuation.
Readers will find that Simondon traces the development of the mental image through four distinct phases, beginning with motor anticipations and evolving into a cognitive system that mediates an organism’s relationship with its environment. He emphasizes that understanding an image requires considering its progressive metamorphosis rather than viewing it through a singular phase. This exploration intersects with topics in philosophy, critical theory, and cognitive psychology, offering a rich examination of how mental images contribute to invention and problem-solving in life.
Official synopsis Publisher
A 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.
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