possibility studies
In order to see more diverse possibilities in the world around us, one needs to widen the lens of perception, and imagining multiple futures attribute to that. When we imagine more, when we explore multiple futures, we perceive more in the present.
Loes Damhof • Imagining the Impossible: An Act of Radical Hope
While scientific progress, then, proceeds by curiously exploring adjacent possibilities, preference is given to work closely tied to existing science and conducted by a privileged subset of scientists.
Perry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
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
A sizeable majority of the world’s population (more than three in five) now believe the world is getting worse.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
It takes a deeply personal, in the bone, in the blood, in the spine recognition of the variables in motion. An abstracted version, an impersonal version, or seemingly "objective" or professional version will pop into modeling and mapping, and lose the necessary tangibility of the details – thus losing access to the realms of possibility to meet
... See moreAt first, preschoolers correctly distinguish possible and impossible actions but are overly pessimistic about limits on possibility. With age, children use their imaginations to overcome hypothetical limits. This account suggests that realistic beliefs about what we can possibly do are in place in early childhood, preceding later developmental
... See moreTamar Kushnir • How Children Learn to Transcend Limits: Developmental Pathways to Possibility Beliefs
Germans talk about the phenomenon of das Verschwinden der Zukunft, the disappearance of the future, and a widening gulf between what people hope for and what they think is likely to happen.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
the struggle against the rejection of possibility is also a political act, one that can lead to resistance, resilience, and the generation of new societal alternatives.
Vlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
The present is reality’s workshop. It is where scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, artists, activists, farmers, journalists, and policymakers collectively construct the world we inhabit. The present is where things happen. We live at the crest of the breaking wave of time.