possibility studies

We cannot know when the time will be ripe for any particular idea. The task of creators is to keep options alive and open and not to be too constrained by the limitations of a present that may be suddenly transformed—by a depression, war, a dramatic collapse of political trust, or a pandemic.

will have histories that have not been written yet. Possibility is the hope we wear when we charge into battle. It is stronger than assumption or reaction because it is intentional.

While many of the foregoing assertions seem to suggest that human explorations of the possible lead to a variety of positive outcomes, from personal to societal, we cannot underestimate the darker sides of this engagement. For example, the discourse of possibility can become a burden when normatively imposed

If knowledge is a network and curiosity is its growth principle, and if the adjacent possible is indeed hovering over the edges of knowledge systems as they currently exist, then curiosity is at least one of, if not the primary, epistemic access point to that field of adjacent epistemic possibilities. Crucially, that field of adjacent epistemic

In the process of construction and deconstruction, knowledge develops in immediately contiguous spaces—that is, along the adjacent possible edges, both inside and outside of a knowledge network structure. To think curiously, then, is to inaugurate that organic process of actualizing adjacent epistemic possibilities.

With care and imagination, the possibilities are endless. The possibilities for finding a way in emergencies are not countable, controllable, or predictable.

Nora Bateson, Combining

Throughout my career, I’ve learned that with the right mix of determination, focus and patience, change is possible. World-weary realism often turns out to be extraordinarily unrealistic.

There is strong evidence that hope is good for us, and if imagination helps us to hope, then we should worry if it is blocked.

Curiosity and possibility are sibling concepts, born of the same horizon and generated along the same edge. They work together to break open what has yet to be thought and done, lived and loved. We are poised at a moment in human history where these sibling concepts—long valued but understudied—are pressing to the fore of our consciousness and