Imagination in Two Languages of Humanities and Natural Sciences

KJC Korea
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pISSN : 2092-6081 / eISSN : 2383-9899

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Imagination in Two Languages of Humanities and Natural Sciences

¹이화여자대학교

ABSTRACT
열림/닫힘 버튼

This paper attempts to find a way for the practitioners of humanities and natural sciences to communicate to each other. Mutual interests in or knowledge of what is going on in the other disciplines are necessary but not sufficient. But if there should be a common language by which they could talk to each other, it would provide a basis by which they could have access to each other. The present paper tries to find that basis by showing (1) that imagination in the humanities is a basic power to broaden human freedom, whereas imagination in the natural sciences is a basic power to investigate natural reality; (2) that imagination in the humanities is qualitative, whereas imagination in the natural sciences is quantitative; and (3) that qualities are determined in terms of categories and numbers, eg., whether Bush is “fast” or Obama is “slow” is determined in terms of Daniel Kahneman’s category proposal and numbers of people who respond positively to the category proposal, whereas quantities are counted in a system of classifications, eg., the question how many are there in this room can neither be counted nor answered without a system where objects are classified in terms of qualities in the order of my personal or our communal interest.
KEYWORDS
열림/닫힘 버튼

qualitative imagination, quantitative imagination, categories, classification, system

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