imagination and knowledge?

Question

einstein said ''imagination is more important than knowledge'' but don't you think that our knowledge indirectly forms what we imagine and don't we need to have knowledge to follow our dreams?

Answer 1

i think imagination precedes knowledge - because someone had to have the idea first, in order to pursue the science that forms the knowledge. And your dreams???? dreams are the gift of an active imagination! You have to have imagined something before you could pursue the knowledge of it. Great question!

Answer 2

No, I don't think that knowledge must come before imagination. I'll try to give you an example as to why, and I'll try to make it short. Back in the mid '60s, before Vietnam became a debacle, there was a cartoonist who drew a strip call "Steve Canyon." To be timely, he had Canyon in the army flying helicopters in Nam. The one thing he did know was that choppers were having a hard time landing in the tall grass over there. So, to solve that problem, he equipped Canyons bird with a large egg shaped device that hung underneath and could be dropped to break open and spread out like pancake batter to flatten the grass and form a landing pad. He had no knowledge of the chemistry or physics or aerodynamics of what he was drawing, nor did any such thing exist for him to have copied, he just needed something plausible to give his character so he could land and rescue troops so he created his invention out of thin air. The kicker is, within a few days after the strip introducing the thing-a-ma-jig ran on a Sunday, a delegation from the Pentagon showed up to confer with him on how much real progress he'd made toward perfecting the thing because they had scientists working on a like project. I hope all that make sense. Anyway, I do agree with the last part of you question. We do indeed need knowledge to follow our dreams. I just think it's the dreams that make us look for new knowledge.

Answer 3

I never did agree with Einstein's statement that imagination is more important than knowledge. I've always put more importance on knowledge. Knowledge about our environment is gathered through our five senses where our brains assimilate what we detect and create our mental reality. It is from the foundation of this sense of reality that we begin to "imagine" and "dream" using what we know about the world around us. Our minds know "this" so we are able to project and foresee "that". So I think that knowledge comes first, then imagination, therefore making knowledge more fundamental.

Answer 4

Einstein is wrong when he says that imagination is more important than knowledge. If he had said that creativity and knowledge are equally important in the quest for truth, then I would be more inclined to agree.

Answer 5

Einstein married his cousin...what would he know... :-)

Newton said, if I see further it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants" (I am paraphrasing a little)

All knowledge comes from our own or other peoples experiences, that why we read books, study etc..

If it weren't based on acquired, tacit knowlege, then imagintation is described as having Visions, and that is a very different ballpark

Answer 6

Einstein, my hero, may have been raising a "chicken & egg" argument. Imagination, he may have felt, is the egg from which knowledge is born. He was saying, I think, that without imagination, humankind would have no *motive* for gaining new knowledge. Hence, imagining leads to wonder which leads to the pursuit of knowledge. New knowledge leads to still more imaginings, but I believe Albert felt that imagination had primacy over knowlege.
I agree! Many lower animals have basic instintive or learned knowlege (for example, 'salmon swim up river' for bears, or 'master will feed me if I beg' for dogs), but, can any other creature other than homo sapiens *imagine* what the underpinnings of their knowledge entail? I think not.

Answer 7

the knowledge that captivates ur imagination is the best.

Answer 8

for imagination we must have knowledge .

Answer 9

Everything is built on what came before.