Your Imagination Profile

Welcome, Imaginaut!

One of the driving goals of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination is to create an Atlas of Imagination: a map of the territory of imagination as an essential human function that is intertwined with nearly every form of cognition and behavior, and woven throughout our everyday lives.

 

YOU can help us map that territory.

 

By taking this survey, you are joining our community of citizen scientists — which we affectionately call “Imaginauts.” Welcome to the team!

 

This survey will help you explore your imagination profile — highlighting some of the unique ways you tend to imagine.

 

The imagination modes that make up your profile are grounded in hundreds of published studies, as well as extensive conceptual and empirical research by our team. However — much like services that evolve with new data — our scoring system improves as more people participate. Your profile may shift over time as new data inform our understanding.

 

It’s important to remember that the science of imagination is still a developing field. Researchers are continuing to explore these ideas and refine the models. For this reason, please do not treat your profile as permanent or absolute. It is not meant to guide major life decisions — and definitely not something to get tattooed!

 

Instead, we encourage you to use your profile as a tool:

 

  • To reflect on how you tend to imagine and think
  • To identify your imagination strengths
  • To explore ways you might further develop your imagination — and help others do the same

 

Enjoy the journey!

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.

Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.

Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.