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What imagination is cannot be answered apart from understanding its conceptual topology, the articulated framework of basic phenomena and concepts that govern our thinking about it. The second step toward this goal is to grasp how Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) exploited and revolutionized the basic "topography" or "matrix" of being–and–soul that his master Plato had laid down. Aristotle made a claim that became the "default position" about imagination for two millennia: that there is no thinking (thus also no knowing) without images. He shifted the center of gravity for imagination studies from the ontology of images that Plato had emphasized to a physiologically based psychology of imagining, which he first embedded in the psychology of animal being and then modified in the human animal by the presence of reason. Although parts of Aristotle's philosophy of imagination are elusive—in particular the radical distance between animal and human imagination—and were distorted by later traditions, it makes a great deal more sense when it is seen against the background of his physical theories. An exploration of these connections not only explains his theory's influence and durability but also why it still provides a unifying basis for understanding contemporary cognitive and biological approaches. Moreover, his theory offers hitherto unexploited resources for more accurately conceiving images as emergent, as variable phenomena that are indispensable for acquiring knowledge and guiding human action.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-6507-8_5

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