Mary Hesse on the role of the human imagination in the philosophy and practice of science

Abstract

Although Mary Hesse remains an influential figure within the history of the philosophy of science her reflections on the role of the human imagination in science have, to date, been mostly neglected. In her first, and often overlooked monograph—Science and the Human Imagination—Hesse described the imagination as composed of four dimensions. Defined as the historical, the critical, the fertile and the creative imagination, these dimensions played, for Hesse, various roles in both the philosophy and practice of science.

Suffice to say, Hesse's discussion of the role of the imagination in science challenges the idea that philosophy and science are logically determined forms of practice through an appeal, as will be argued, to Immanuel Kant's seminal reflections on the ‘indispensable function’ of the imagination. Accordingly, a detailed elucidation of Science and the Human Imagination not only situates Hesse's reflections within the long history of the philosophy of the imagination; it revitalises anew contemporary debates on the role of the imagination in the philosophy and practice of science.