possibility studies
As stated by Glăveanu (2022) in his Manifesto, “[t]he possible re-emerges as an organizing category in our lives and our thinking not despite but because of living through the seemingly impossible and unimaginable.” The possible, transitions, temporalities, and the pluriverse appear as part of the same complex process of civilizational transition.
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to Possibility Studies
It’s better to prefer incompleteness over completeness; capacious imagination instead of futures that are too specific or neat; and experimentation and exploration over visions and blueprints. I’m sceptical of overly coherent utopias or the belief that societies follow simple logics. Instead, I see the work of imagination (and the life of real
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Countries that used to define themselves through creating bold new institutions no longer do so—there are no recent equivalents to the NHS or the BBC in Britain; no equivalents of NASA or DARPA in the US. In much of academic life, too, you are more likely to succeed by slightly tweaking an established idea than creating a novel one.18
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Numbers are just numbers; they cannot source possibilities from each other or find a way when the basic arithmetic says there is none—people can. Abstracting the solutions to numbers inherently dehumanizes and unnecessarily constrains the spectrum of possibilities. The metric logic removes the human breadth of experience and relationship. This cold
... See moreChildren in our studies who believe in possibility rarely cite libertarian ideas of “free will” (I am the ultimate authority over my actions and decisions). Instead, they sound like they are imagining hypothetical (and novel) solutions to social and psychological problems. This increasing willingness to transcend psychological, social, and moral
... See moreTamar Kushnir • How Children Learn to Transcend Limits: Developmental Pathways to Possibility Beliefs
I’ve seen so many ideas move from being impossible to becoming everyday realities that I find fatalism hard to stomach.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
(3) Historically and ontologically, modernity is characterized by the separation between humans and nature (anthropocentrism), mind and body (rationalism and mechanicism), observer and observed (representationalism), us and them (colonialism, supremacy ideologies), and so forth. This dualist ontology was fundamental for the development of
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to Possibility Studies
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
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