Imagination More Important them Knowledge?

Question

I know the albert Einstein quote. But what I am asking is Do you think it is and why. I want clear, detailed answers.
~D.W~

Answer 1

Absolutely. It will be a sad day when knowledge is all that drives mankind. Out of imagination comes creativity; out of creativity comes music, art, color, and variety in general. While knowledge is power, imagination is life. Imagination drives knowledge. Without it, knowledge would stagnate.

Answer 2

Absolutely not.
The point that Einstein is making is that imagination is less common than knowledge.

There are alot of people out there with a lot of education. Imagination is what makes great leaps of progress possible, when someone takes the knowlege they have and say "Hey, why don't we just...". What they are doing is applying their knowledge, or looking at their knowledge in a new way. A great visionary needs both imagination and knowledge, and imagination is in much shorter supply. That's Einstein's point.

That being said, knowledge is far far far more important in life. Sitting on your rear end imagining you can fly won't get you airborne. Reading a book on aerodymanics and learning how to make a wing and experimenting with gliders and collecting data and using the scientific method and hard work is what worked for the Wright Brothers.

Look at the movie Apollo 13. Remember the scene when all the engineers in mission controll whipped out their slide rules and did the math in their heads? That wasn't imagination, that was knowledge at work. They knew physics, they knew math, they knew how to use a slide rule, they knew the space craft and its capabilites.

Saving Apollo 13 took imagination. Remember the scene when they took the bag full of things that were onboard the space craft and had to make a working air filter? That took some imagination.

Mostly though it took knowledge. They had to know what was on the spacecraft in the first place. They had to know what systems were ABSOLUTELY needed and what they could safely power down. They had to know how fast the ship was going, which way it was headed, what sort of delta V the LEM engines were capable of, how much punishment the heat shield could take, etc. They had to KNOW how much oxygen and power were left, they had to KNOW that they could power the CM back up and they had to KNOW that the checklist worked; that's why Mattingly works in the simulator so long, so he can KNOW.

When people's lives are on the line you need to KNOWLEDGE, not imagination. General Custer imagined that he would win at Little Big Horn, it was what he didn't KNOW (how many Souix were down there in that village) that killed him.

Answer 3

Imagination is more important because imagination is what brings knowledge in the first place. If humans had not wondered and imagined about the world around them, they would have no motive to actually gain knowledge about it.

Answer 4

A healthy mix of both is required for success.

You need imagination to apply knowledge. You need the knowledge for pragmatism.

Answer 5

but not more important than wisdom. knowledge is basically on par with information. all humans have access to that, to a greater or lesser extent. wisdom, however, appears to be "enjoyed" by a relative few, since it requires a high level of consciousness in order to access. a state of "being" reserved for those with the most imagination, and a potent connection to "the divine" rather than to their bank accounts and egos ;-)

Answer 6

Yes. Having the brains means nothing if you can't think of a way to use them. Many successful people of average intelligence prove this all the time with their imaginative ways of becoming millionaires.

Answer 7

You have to have knowledge to shape imagination otherwise you just create fantasies.

Answer 8

Remember tht the mind is in itself only a space in time. Hence the mind is Buddha and Buddha the mind so in reality imagination only in the Karmatic is what matters, because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas