The Evolution of Imagination
- Contents
- Review Quotes

One: The Second Universe
Counting Off
Some Crucial Ingredients
The Captain or the Muse?
Metaphysical Imagination
A Second Universe
Philosophical Missteps
You Are an Expert Improviser
Two: The Creative Body
Give the Drummer Some
Thinking with Your Body
The Simulation System
Hot Cognition and Heuristics
I Feel, Therefore I Improvise
The Most Playful Ape
The Caveman Thespian
Emotional Intelligence and Improvisation
Three: Drawing, Dreaming, and Visual Improvisation
The Roots and the Walking Bass
Caveman Picassos
Images, Dreams and Proto-Consciousness
Pictorial Mind and Creative Thinking
Voluntary Imagination
Four: Spinning the Yarn: Creating with Language
Playing the Head
How Did Language Evolve?
Storytelling Apes
Take It to the Bridge! Improvisation as Helpful Deviance
Tuning a Theory
Five: Blowing Away the Self: Creativity and Control
Solo Time
Evolution of the First-Person Perspective
Where Is the Self?
Zen, Flow, and Brain Systems
Finding Your Way Back
Six: The Politics of Imagination: Trading Fours
The Cultures of Creating and Copying
Ethics and the Moral Imagination
Improvisation, Dogmatism, and the Future of Freedom
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Biological Sciences: Evolutionary Biology
Cognitive Science: General Works | Human and Animal Cognition
Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind
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