A vivid imagination is one of the defining features of human mental life. A large body of research has shown that mental imagery is supported by some of the same cognitive systems that underlie perception and action (Decety, 1996; Kosslyn, Thompson, & Ganis, 2006). At the same time, our imaginations can go far beyond what is currently available in our physical environment; we can conjure up new...

Fractal patterns abound in nature [1] and began to capture the imaginations of ecologists and animal behaviorists a little over three decades ago [2–4]. One field of study in which interest in fractal patterns has grown substantially over this time is animal movement ecology, where three basic approaches have been employed [reviewed in [5]]. Among these are (i) spatial [4,6,7] and (ii) temporal...

There are very few jokes about sociologists. This is frustrating for the sociologists, especially if they compare themselves with their more favored second cousins, the psychologists, who have pretty much taken over that sector of American humor that used to be occupied by clergymen. A psychologist, introduced as such at a party, at once finds himself the object of considerable attention and un...

Children ranging from 4 to 8years (n=39) reported whether they could imagine various improbable phenomena (e.g., a person making onion juice) as well as various impossible phenomena (e.g., a person turning an onion into a banana) and then described what they imagined. In their descriptions, children mentioned ordinary causes much more often than extraordinary causes. Descriptions of such ordina...

This article critically examines the ways in which the trope of prosthesis has been used in recent theory to understand human-technology relationships. Analyzing the trope from a number of angles, including disability, factory labor practices, mass production, and marketing, the author scrutinizes ways in which technologies are simultaneously wounding and enabling in ways for which the prosthes...

In Petry's edition of the Encyclopedia, it appears from the table of contents that Imagination is subdivided into (a) Reproductive Imagination, (b) Associative Imagination, and (c) Phantasy, which is then itself subdivided into (i) Symbol, (ii) Sign, and (iii) Language. But this division seems to be Boumann's, not Hegel's, for if attention is paid to the architectonic mentioned in the main para...