Some Cliches Are At Least True. This One Isn't

[poliphilo]

I hate that phrase "beyond imagination" (David Attenborough just used it in a trailer for his series about the wildlife of the poles.) Nothing is beyond imagination. I can imagine anything that exists and an infinite number of things that don't. You name it and I'll imagine it. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I thought someone might mention that...

I dunno, I can imagine 11 dimensions in the sense that I'm willing to entertain the idea. Does imagination have to include understanding?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I can entertain the idea, but I can neither do the maths necessary to understand it intellectually, nor picture it in my mind. I suppose it depends what you want to include in "imagination".

Alternatively, could we say that the fact that you can't imagine something beyond your imagination is itself a limit on your imagination? A kind of inversion of Anselm's proof for the existence of God?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I picture it as an eleven tiered wedding cake- or a complex arrangement in perspex.

Things I can't imagine in their actuality I can imagine through symbols and metaphors.