PERCEPTION AND IMAGINATION

Is there a difference between perception and imagination?  That is to ask, is the feeling of perception and the feeling of imagination similar?

Let’s think for a moment about the everyday act of perception.  What does it feel like to perceive?  What does it feel like to perceive what we see?

We generally think that our perceptions are real:  we typically consider what we perceive to be real.  We typically think that the blue sky is real, and we do not make the distinction that the blue sky is simply our perception.

So how does what we imagine compare to what we perceive?  How does the sensation of imagining compare to the sensation of perception?

Bachelard tells us,

“I myself consider literary documents as realities of the imagination.  And why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?”

Please re-read the above quote, and substitute “drawings” for “literary documents.”

And when you make that substitution, we are presented with the idea that our drawings are equal to our perceptions.  Our drawings from our imagination are just as real as the blue sky.  What we imagine is real.

Which I think is a helpful thought.  What you imagine, the ideas and solutions that float in and thru your imagination, are equal to your perceptions.  This is an optimistic and helpful concept.

Yet I never hear anybody talking about our imaginations, the act of imagining, how to imagine with greater creativity, how to enrich the act of imagining, what it is to imagine.  And how to be aware that what you are imagining might indeed be very real.

We should celebrate our imaginations.  We should rejoice in the realness of our imagining.  And we should glorify that perception and imagination are similar.

1.  Bachelard, Gaston.  The Poetics of Space.  Beacon Press:  Boston.  1958.