Every invention or idea first began in the imagination
- I imagine this occurs in the right hemisphere since the left hemisphere prioritizes things that it already knows and expects
Because we take imagination for granted, we rarely stop to think about what a strange phenomenon it is. What we imagine is often trivial or useless and easily dismissed. It is the realm of dreams when we sleep, or daydreams when we are bored, and those fantasies and nightmares are frequently little help in paying the mortgage. Imagination, as intellectuals and philosophers claim, can appear to be a lesser thing than knowledge or reason. Yet when you examine those higher, more celebrated forms of cognition, you realize that they too are dependent on imagination.
An engineer requires a plan of something that does not exist before they can start to physically construct it. The theory of relativity began when Einstein attempted to imagine how the world would appear if he were travelling on a beam of light. The discipline of philosophy is a centuries-long tradition of imaginative thought experiments. Before a verbal, spoken language can evolve and develop, someone needs to imagine a connection between concepts and sounds. As William Blake once stated: “What is now proved was once, only imagin’d.” Should you attempt to think of an activity, pursuit or cause that can be described as more important than the ephemeral act of imagination, you soon realize that without imagination it would be impossible. The ability to voluntarily or unwittingly conjure in our minds what does not exist, it turns out, is a necessary part of all the different abilities that differentiate us from the animals.
References
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HIggs, John. (2021). William Blake vs The World Chapter 7 ONCE, ONLY IMAGIN’D (p. 153). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
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Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (p. 9).
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Philosophy / Epistemology Status:⛅️