The Intersection of Imagination, the Arts and Science: The Future Begins in the Mind

by Manjana Milkoreit, Walton Postdoctoral Fellow

The human ability to think about the future – imagination, forethought, anticipation – is essential for our capability to plan and prepare for things to come, but also to create, design and bring about the futures we want. Living at the dawn of the Anthropocene – a time when humans are the key driver of planetary-scale change – our collective causal reach is extending further into the future than it ever did before. Given the multiple planetary changes already underway at the beginning of the 21st century, the past no longer seems to be a reliable guide to the future. In this human-dominated epoch we need to learn about and practice wisely our collective power to influence the distant future – the world in which not only our children, but our grandchildren’s grandchildren will live.

Given these circumstances, scientific knowledge that can help us understand how the future might unfold and how it might differ from the past becomes increasingly important. But science that describes the possible future of cities, ecosystems, industries, oceans or food systems often does so in the form of numbers, charts, graphs and terminology that non-scientists find hard to translate into meaningful ideas and images that we can act upon. Science about the future requires imagination – it becomes the source material for our decisions and actions only when and to the extent that we are able to connect it to our dreams, fears and desires.

Imagination is a cognitive skill – a process that happens in our minds – but also a product of our interactions with each other and with nature. The things we read, see and hear, the stories we tell each other, the emotions we experience and the things we observe in the world around us can shape our imagination. At the same time the things we cannot see, hear, feel or otherwise experience matter for our (in)ability to create imagined worlds and act upon them.

Art and culture are essential tools for humans to grapple with their problems – telling stories, creating images, or making music enables us to work through, represent, critique and reinvent our world. Art can make the invisible visible, the inaudible heard. It can create mental and emotional experiences of things that have not yet come to pass. Given this unparalleled power of the arts to bring the not-yet-existent into life, the future into the present, shouldn’t art be an ideal conduit to bridge the gap between climate science and human choice?

The literary genre of climate fiction (CliFi) is emerging in the space between art, science and political decision-making, and offers a focal point to explore this disciplinary intersection. Many bold claims have already been made about the power of CliFi to reshape society’s responses to climate change, but we really do not know whether reading a novel can change what you believe, how you behave and how you vote.

Understanding the potential power of CliFi and other forms of cultural engagement with climate change is at the heart of the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, a new interdisciplinary program at Arizona State University. A partnership between the Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, the Center for Science and the Imagination, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, this program is particularly interested in two questions: How does CliFi relate to climate science, and (how) does it have political impacts? We are excited to welcome award-winning author Margaret Atwood this November to help address these questions.

The future begins in the mind.