Without curiosity, the space of the adjacent possible would exist but remain unplumbed and inactive. Curiosity then opens up adjacent possibilities, whether that means new nodes and edges or the reformulation of existing nodes and edges (and ultimately of the network itself).

Collectivities of humans, moreover, take a myriad of shapes, from small groups to organizations and transnational corporations. This is not even to mention the curious possibilities pursued in and among the more-than-human world. The dynamics we are describing, then, are scalar in nature and have wide conceptual purchase accordingly.

If curiosity can be a critical comportment toward the possible, then to fully understand possibility one must also understand curiosity

The concept of possibility has long been intertwined with the discourse of curiosity. The way things might be can disturb the way things are, but we have to be ready for it. Curiosity provides that readiness.

The possibilities of what we might now think, and know, and become are not necessarily novel in the sense of never having been witnessed before. Many artists work in and with historical tropes and beckon, through them, beyond the present horizon. It is that bidirectionality that allows them to crack open the network of thought.

Art, as Bloch said, is a laboratory of possibilities. Indeed, other worlds become possible as and insofar as we curiously reformulate the networks in our heads—and in our hearts.

Although science may proceed through the experimental pluck of one scientist or another, it is ultimately a collaborative endeavor. Similarly, speculative fiction is read by the singular reader but experienced by a fanbase and sometimes a whole culture (or cultures).

“experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads” (p. 12). Those silken lines are threaded and rethreaded, knotted and reknotted, to make and remake webs of sense.

Collectively, these four forms of the possible (i.e. new node, new edge, changed node, changed edge) in network science are studied under the notion of the adjacent possible (Björneborn, 2020). The term “adjacent possible” refers to the fact that what is possible is what is adjacent to what exists. What is impossible is what is not adjacent to what