RISULTATI RICERCA

The paper analytically comments on Ricoeur’s remarks about imagination. Ricoeur was one of the first philosophers to underline Kant’s innovative role concerning imagination. According to Kant imagination has a creative function between the plane of reason (Verstand) and the plane of experience. But Kant’s reflection on imagination has a double value: in the Critic of pure reason Kant underlines the synthetic role of imagination for human knowledge, while in the third Critic he emphasises the role of imagination for artistic creativity. With reference to Husserl’s and Bachelard’s lessons, Ricoeur says that imagination has a fundamental function for the genesis of human thought. For this reason the paper shows how Ricoeur’s lesson on imagination, together with Einstein’s one, represents an import contribution to built a more sophisticated form of critical rationalism.

According to Galileo the scientist is a philosopher of nature. But in the opinion of Galilei to study the nature the scientist must use mathematical truths and mathematical accuracy to know for certain, besides the scientist must verify theory by experiments. So scientific enterprise is in possession of two polarities: a theoretical constituent and an experimental constituent. Einstein thinks that scientific knowledge flows from the world of Lebenswelt thanks to new ideas by which we can construct a theory by a deductive reasoning. The experiment gives us the possibility to control theory, but this verification is always questionable. So for Galilei and Einstein science have a conceptual dimension by which we can trace the outline of an objective world.