Imagination: from the image to symbol, from the symbol to text

Abstract

This article is dedicated to conceptualization of the subject field of imagination. Imagination stops being a byproduct of the creative process. It is defined as the ability to exceed boundaries of creative process in mental combinations of the aspects of knowledge and being, sensation and reason. Research methodology is substantiated by the complementarity and intersection of different discourses on imagination on the basis of dialectics as an ancient mode of thought. Imagination is determined from the perspective of ontoepistemology and accumulation of structural-organizational attachments into image. The unity of being and knowledge (ontoepistemology) manifests in segmentation of the image and derivation of structural generalizations, all of which allow determining multiple meanings of the objects discovered by means of visualization and symbolization. Being correlate of the symbol, image is visualized, and reveals the meanings of human life. Symbol saturates image with the content. Image has power over people and their mind by not complying with the rules. Imagination is a method for reconstructing cognitive process. It is perceived as an instrument for comparing, uniting, and coordination of diverse elements of cognition. Imagination mentalizes the image, helps to comprehend it through a number of transitions, inside which takes place integration of segments of the image into a symbol. Then, through generalization of the image (symbols, words, meanings), its form turns into a text, read by the mind, for example, a rhizome that removes contradistinction of internal and external, subjective and objective. Mentalization of the image, symbolization of its segments and their translation into in the text takes place by integration of structural attachments into the image. The author suggests that this conceptual construct allows determining the role of imagination among other representations of human sciences.