AS A historian of ideas, you would expect me to be concerned with the rise and fall of concepts throughout recorded history. What fascinates me the most, however, is the way ideas evolve. The philosopher Daniel Dennett from Tufts University in Boston described evolution as the most important idea ever, and the process certainly applies to ideas themselves and to language, in which most ideas are expressed. I think that many psychological concepts, because they originate in language coined before the rise of science, are now outmoded: in particular, “imagination” and “introspection”.
For some people, ideas are ten a penny:…
