Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. Every invention also leads to the creation of new knowledge. This is how knowledge is created to satisfy the need of human beings. How does man’s need or desire become knowledge?
The answer lies in the human being’s ability to imagine what is beyond sensual perception.
It is through the human imagination that all knowledge has been created. Knowledge can be represented in any form, such as words, images, diagrams or audiovisual media. Knowledge of knowledge again triggers the imagination as needs continue to evolve, again producing new knowledge.
What is knowledge without imagination?
Knowledge is meaningless without imagination. Imagine reading the scriptures in front of a dog. Surely it can’t have any effect on the dog. Imagine giving a book written in English to a person who does not know English. It’s useless to him as he can’t understand anything about it. Even images that are free from the language barrier have the effect only if they can trigger an imagination in the person. There would be no effect of the image of the most beautiful women in the world on an animal in the same way that the most important diagrams of physics are useless for a man of art.
How are we so sure of answering the above questions even without reading scripture in front of a dog and gauging its reaction?
The answer is again “imagination”.
It seems that we know the answers to most questions not by reading any books or by experience, but purely by imagination.
What we consider knowledge is nothing more than imagination that is triggered in the mind of the knower of knowledge. Knowledge that does not trigger the imagination is meaningless. Even words like love, God, intelligence are nothing more than knowledge that triggers the imagination of something in us. These imaginations may be different for each person, but they all have some common features of imagination.
All knowledge is but a word that carries a lot of imagination. For example, when we say “The Theory of Relativity”, it does trigger in us the entire theory of relativity (if we have understood it) that can be explained in many pages. If anyone knows the theory of relativity, these words have no imagination and no meaning. If you say the word, like Bill Clinton” it means a person with so many attributes. You can spend your whole life explaining what it means to be God, Love or Bill Clinton, including those aspects that you create from your own imagination that are still unknown to the world.
Thus, the imagination is the source of all knowledge, as Einstein said,
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Because knowledge is limited to all that we now know and understand, while imagination encompasses the entire world, and all that there will ever be to know and understand”
Scientific knowledge and imagination
Scientific knowledge is often considered factual and unimaginative. However, it does not seem to be true. Consider the theory of the atom. The Bohr model of the atom states that each atom consists of a positively charged nucleus that has protons and neutrons that are surrounded by negatively charged electrons. So when we think of the atom, our mind imagines the image of the atom as all the planets revolving around the sun. However, there is some information about the atom that is not yet known. For example, how the positive proton joins to form a nucleus overcoming the repulsive force faced by the same charges. Where did the neutron come from and embedded itself in the nucleus. Where the electrons came from and began to revolve around the nucleus. These are unexplained facts of atomic theory, as it is beyond human perception at the moment.
Consider one of the earliest theories in physics, viz. Gravity discovered by Newton. We know that all material bodies experience an attractive force with each other. We have precisely measured the quantum of this force and its relationship to mass and distance. However, we do not know how this force works? Previously, scientists believed that there was something called a gravitational wave that is present between the masses, although no such wave was ever found. Einstein, using his general theory of relativity, explained that the result of the acceleration of mass is the same as the gravitational force. It means that if he is sitting in a closed space like an elevator, it is impossible for him to tell whether the force he experiences is due to the gravitational attraction of a mass or the acceleration of the elevator. When Einstein gave this theory of the space-time continuum, it was not easily accepted as other people could not imagine what Einstein imagined when making the theory of relativity. Hence, his theory went unnoticed for more than 15 years. Many of these theories die a natural death when people fail to imagine the content of these theories.
Similar is the case for other commonly observed forces that exist between electric charges and magnetic substances. All electric and magnetic charge waves are imaginary but useful for understanding the effect of charge or magnetism.
With more imagination, you can easily conclude that even if gravity waves, electric charges and magnetism are supposed to exist, it still cannot be explained how waves cause attraction or repulsion. This aspect is still beyond the imagination of the human being, therefore, it remains outside the scope of scientific knowledge.
Now consider the Big Bang theory. It explains many things that are known about the universe, except that it is impossible to know what existed before the Big Bang. There must be something that existed before the Big Bang, but no theory is created because it is beyond the imagination of the human mind.
John Dewey summed up the role of imagination in scientific inventions in the book “The Quest for Certainty” in the following words.
Every great advance in science has sprung from a new boldness of the imagination.
Thus, knowledge stops where the human imagination stops. However, in every age people are born who dare to think beyond the obvious and discover new knowledge from the treasure of Nature and God.
Imagination permeates humanity
Imagination is man’s ability to form mental images, or the ability to spontaneously generate images within one’s own mind. However, imagination is not voluntary, as it happens automatically if one wants it to. Furthermore, the imagination is not individualistic but consists of many common characteristics. There seems to be a common thread of imagination that is present in all human beings from birth. The innate imagination doesn’t seem to have changed much over thousands of years.
An artist knows the truth of this omnipresent imagination that forms the core of the human personality. Therefore, when you make an art using his imagination, it really captures the imagination of all mankind in it. A good poet or writer writes a poem or a fiction using his imagination, but his creation triggers the same types of imagination in large numbers of people. Thus people understand the author’s knowledge and emotion through the words of literature or the image of the arts.
Imagination is also at the core of man’s ability to become a leader. A leader through his imagination captures the imagination of the masses and transfers his imagination into his mind. Thus a good leader is one who makes his imagination as the imagination of the people. The success stories of the leaders create knowledge of management and politics. Knowledge is simply the visible tool that imaginative people use to transfer their understanding to other people.
No human relationship is possible without imagination. We all seem to know the thoughts of others from our imagination. The difference between a successful relationship and a failed one is the ability of the couple to have an accurate knowledge of the other person’s mind from her imagination. A man without the proper imagination is doomed to failure both in his personal and professional life, even if he knows all the theories in the world because even the application of theories needs imagination.
Imagination seems to have many layers. The core of the imagination appears to be eternal like the person’s soul, while the surface of the imagination can alter with time and place. It is for this reason that the knowledge contained in the scriptures and the classics still fills people’s imaginations and continues to be useful knowledge for people.
Imagination: the means and the end of knowledge
Imagination is behind all the creations in the world. Blaise Pascal has wisely said: “The imagination has everything; it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which are everything in this world.”
Knowledge, which is the person’s ability to know something, arises from the person’s imagination. Therefore, it is correct to say that imagination is the mother of knowledge. Imagination is like God who is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and the source of all that we can accomplish. Imagination is thus the manifestation of God in the human brain as a famous poet Emily Dickinson said in her poem
The brain is wider than the sky
To put them side by side,
The one the other will contain
With ease and with you.The brain is deeper than the sea
To keep them blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb
Like the Sponge Cubes do.The Brain is just the weight of God
to weigh them pound for pound,
And they will differ if they do
As a syllable of sound.