None of us believe Mr. Darcy or Oliver Twist are real, no matter how much we might wish it so. Yet fiction's most fantastical creations have a habit of leaping into reality. Does imagination create reality, and if so, do we need to conjure new visions of better worlds to relegate the darkness of the present?

Dylan Evans is a behavioural scientist and CEO of risk intelligence company Projection Point. He has been selected as among the Independent’s twenty best young writers in Britain and described by the Guardian as “Alain de Botton in a lab coat”.

Here he speaks to the IAI about the relationship between imagination and reality, and why this affects how we can build a better future.

You take the view that our imaginations play a very important part in shaping our reality. Can you give a few examples of how this works?

It is more accurate to say that our imaginations shape our perception of reality, than to say that they shape reality itself. Perception is not just a matter of sensory input; it is also shaped by the ideas and preconceptions we have. Two people can see the same situation in very different ways. To a convinced atheist, for example, the crucifixion of Jesus seems a mere gruesome spectacle, an act of bloody torture. But to a Christian the crucifixion is not merely a man being tortured, but the Son of God, suffering to redeem our sins. The latter imagines something entirely different to the former. Or take Steve Jobs. To a believer in free markets, he can seem like a pioneering entrepreneur, creating jobs and wealth. To a communist, on the other hand, he might appear to be the very embodiment of an exploitative capitalist, living off the labour of others.