Imagination is more important than Knowledge
By bsclot
@bsclot (18)
Philippines
November 9, 2008 10:40pm CST
"Imagination is more important than Knowledge" by the late genius physicist Einstein. I guess this is true since no matter how knowledgeable a person is, if he doesn't have a sense of creativity, his knowledge will still be worthless. Even Einstein himself couldn't have come up with his theory of relativity if he didn't use his imagination since during his time, there was no such thing as atom colliders or supercomputers.
Whats your take on this?
1 person likes this
4 responses
@Boraxo (225)
• United States
10 Nov 08
Imagination is a wonderful thing and is many times the driving force behind using knowledge. You can have endless amounts of knowledge and no means to use it, and thats where imagination comes in. The best example I can give is the concept of lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is an avenue to get outside the box so to speak and come up with new conceptual thoughts to accomplish something with the knowledge in place. The example I use for lateral thinking is the game of chess.
You may have great skills in tactics, positional theory, openings, combinations, and end games, however you may find that the game has become very standard and boring. Through imagination(lateral thinking), you can become very creative and look at the game outside the box, as two opponents at war,or two competitve teams with ideas from sports,a battle for territory and many other imaginative ways of thinking to accomplish the goal of winning the game. I play tournament chess and I am not a very good player, however the imagination I use to get ready for a tournament is what keeps me playing. I will travel couple hundred miles, get a room with internet connection and pretend I am a grandmaster prepping for the world championship *smile*, now thats imagination.
1 person likes this
@Boraxo (225)
• United States
10 Nov 08
Perhaps it is just preception of the knowledge within combined with imagination that creates the art. Blue is Blue or is it. The way I precieve the color blue may not be the same as your preceive blue. You may see the blue of the sky, as I might see blue of the ocean, and our artist sees the blue of the night. It is still blue as relative to knowledge of color, but it each of our preceptions it is the sky, ocean and night. Imagination is the creative instrument used to express the blue in the artist's eye.
@bsclot (18)
• Philippines
10 Nov 08
Lateral thinking, thats a new concept I have learn today. Thanks. In your example, it looks like knowledge is coming first, before imagination. I guess, before we have imagined something, we were already influenced by the external environment which triggered our creative juices to flow. I wonder what influences artist who create genuine original work.
@bsclot (18)
• Philippines
10 Nov 08
Right, the only alternative to knowledge is ignorance. I guess, everything starts with imagination and knowledge comes in when dreams are to be put into reality. At least for creative art work like music or paintings, I don't think some kind of specialized knowledge is really needed in order to the vision into reality.
1 person likes this
@Princecaspian (225)
• Norway
11 Nov 08
Well if you want to be an author of a fiction or fantasy book imagination counts a lot but still a a little amount of knowledge is necessary.
@cornyman (1128)
• Germany
14 Dec 08
Hello bsclot,
Imagination is always important, only from this part of the mind power the real knowledge can be developed. It's correct that without imagination Mr Einstein never would have come up with the relativity theory.
It's the same with blogging without imagination before you start a blog you never can be successful in it. You must now what you can offer for the persons who watch your blog. You must imagine what they want to see and how you can attract them to watch it.
If you like to do so, you can go to my profile's website and have a look at it.
Have a nice start in the week!
