by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: February 12, 2009

Without knowledge, the gains of the past are lost. Without imagination, the gains of the future are never realized. The great scientific and creative minds of today stand upon the shoulders of past knowledge and imagination. Knowledge gives us the tools. Imagination helps us to use those tools.

Any great artist, such as a painter, exhibits a high level of creativity and imagination. But no artist is required to invent paint, brushes, and canvas every time she begins a painting. The knowledge and imagination of the past provides the tools for the creative artist in the present to express their skill, knowledge, and imagination.

Knowledge provides the foundation, the platform, the launching pad for the imagination. The imagination is supported by knowledge and can lead to further knowledge. But knowledge without imagination is static. It cannot get off the ground. It cannot soar.

Knowledge is what is seen and known. There would be no change, no growth, nothing new under the sun if all we had was that which is already seen and known. Primitive peoples lived exactly the same way for hundreds if not thousands of years. There is nothing wrong with that but it limits the human potential.

Imagination is the realm of the invisible and the unknown. With the imagination, we leap from the known to the formerly unknown. We see in our mind's eye that which no on else has ever seen before. Imagination is related to seeing, as in seeing an image.

Imagination is also linked to magic, with the word "magic" itself as well as words like "mage." The imagination is the realm of the magical. With the imagination, something that was not real before suddenly becomes real. A thought, an idea, a thing that never existed before now magically exists.

With my own magical thinking, I am aware that I take things that are known, previous knowledge, and put them together in new ways to create something new and imaginative. So my understanding of how knowledge and imagination work together involves simply taking knowledge already available and making connections that are new. Connecting old knowledge in new ways with the imagination creates new knowledge.

A genius is someone who is skilled at making these kinds of connections. She is able to see beyond what is obvious to others and imagine what is not yet real. This also suggests that the ability to leap from the known to the unknown really is magic. It creates something new that never existed before.

Anyone can increase their knowledge in any subject that interests them, some better than others. But is it possible to increase one's ability to imagine? I honestly don't know the answer to that. I know that all of us were graced with wonderful imaginations when we were children.

Do we naturally lose this ability as we age? Is it diminished because our culture values knowledge over imagination? My feeling is that we never lose anything we once had. That childish imagination still exists within us somewhere. It may be more important now than ever.

In the future, we will live in the world that we are capable of imagining today. Now more than ever, we need to be able to imagine a better world for our progeny and for ourselves. If we imagine the future through our fears and doubts, that is the world we will live in.

We are also limited, in our personal lives, only by our imagination. A better self; a better life; a better world, are only a vision away.

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