What would the Latin be for "imaginative man". homo imagin....?

Factual Questions
1

Hi

What would the Latin be for “imaginative man”. homo imagin…?
We have:

homo habilis
homo erectus
homo sapiens sapiens, homo economicus…etc.
What about ‘imaginative man’? How would your express that in Latin?
I look forward to your feedback.

2

Depends on exactly what you mean, it its context. Do you mean the whole body of mankind identified by man’s imaginative nature?

3

yes

4

have we ruled out “homo imaginans”?

5

homo imagines?

6

imaginans as in the present participle of imaginor

7

Yes. Correct. Thank you DPRK. Very helpful.

8

But that would be “Man imagines”; in the parallel constructions, the second word is always an adjective, not a verb.

9

Thanks Nava, what do you suggest might be a better phrasing?

10

I’ve found several instances of Homo Imaginativus.

They mainly appear to be from texts in Spanish or Italian about psychology; some refer to the creative process, others are about depression (specifically about the idea that getting people to create something would kick them out of a depressive state; Homo Imaginativus vs. Homo Depressivus).

11

More like “man who imagines/is imagining” [“man imagines” would be “homo imaginatur”], but I concede the point vs “homo imaginativus”… On the other hand, what do you make of “homo faber”, “homo ludens”, “homo sapiens”? “Homo imaginans” was meant to be analogous to “homo sapiens” and “homo ludens”!

12

Isn’t the sapiens in homo sapiens “wise, knowledgeable”? And the ludens, “playful”. Origins of sabio and lúdico, respectively… (I play from a Romance language).

13

I am no native Latin speaker :wink: but there is online Lewis & Short…

Anyway, of course yes,
sapiens = tasteful, i.e., wise, from sapio
ludens = playful, from ludo

…so you can see where “imaginans” is supposed to come from; the only difference is that “imaginor” is deponent

cf: “Ego sum res cogitans, id est dubitans, affirmans, negans, pauca intelligens, multa ignorans, volens, nolens, imaginans etiam & sentiens…”

14

Yes Nava, I’ve seen references to Homo imaginativus. That is “imaginative man”. Thanks.

Google translate does a terrible job of translating the following. It would be nice to get a good English translation.

“quicquid homo imaginatur se non posse, id necessario imaginatur, et hac imaginatione ita disponitur, ut id agere revera non possit, quod se non posse imaginatur”

15

Hmm… very roughly: whatever man imagines he cannot do, he imagines this necessarily, and he is disposed by this imagining so that he really cannot do what he imagines he cannot do.

16

Thanks DPRK,
This translation makes sense, except for this part “he imagines this necessarily, and he is disposed by this imagining”. How else can you express this?

17

No. Homo imaginans means “imagining man” (in the sense of “man who imagines/man who is characterised by the fact that he imagines”) just as home sapiens means “knowing man/man who knows/man who is characterised by the fact that he knows”.

18

I couldn’t find any reference in English, so I tried a few other languages. This is from a German article. It seems to agree with Nava’s choice.

https://rundschau-hd.de/2017/10/42834/
“Wir sind ja nicht nur Homo imaginativus, (der einfallsreiche Mensch)”

19

I’m not saying that homo imaginativus is wrong or inappropriate. I’m just saying that homo imaginans does not mean, as I think Nava suggests, “man imagines”; it means “imagining man”. It’s exactly analogous to homo sapiens, except that it’s constructed from the verb imaginari, to imagine, rather than from the verb sapere, to know.

20

Good point UDS. Thanks for that clarification.