Calibrating possibility

Embracing difference and cultivating hope: The transformative potential of Possibility Studies

“…For Facer (2023) connection is also an important outcome of cultivating a temporal imagination, connecting across different timescales. This also extends to research authorships as Wilkins et al (2023) demonstrates by explaining that while the words she uses may be hers but the research and ideas are deeply collaborative.…”

“…The second is a greater violation because people cannot construct a consistent mental model. This is articulated in a different domain by Wilkins et al (2023) who reminds us of the way that narratives require an internal coherence to be accepted -what she calls plausibility. Our imagination is constrained by the reality of our mental models of the world, as Ormerod (2023) jokingly asks -is cardboard a possible breakfast?…”

“…Both remind us that imagination is limited by constraints on the possibility space. Part of the aim of possibility studies is to understand how these dynamic spaces can be breached (Valsiner, 2023) and Wilkins et al (2023) deftly illustrate how these mental models can be updated by changing the internal logic of the narrative -for their protagonist Miranda to be a 1950s schoolgirl with a weaponised spaceship requires a back story, an adjustment to the logic we perceive as fixed. Importantly, the mental model is externalised, here in a story and from there manipulated to generate more possibilities (Magnani, 2023) Reality as a constraint and as a scaffold of the workings of the possible moves beyond mental models to extended socio-cultural understandings.…”