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Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein


                          Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving.


In this article, I will cite some principles of imagination and the importance of its own ability to magnify your visions into a realistic one. Success can be defined in many ways, but only few who found it meaningful and one of a kind journey to achieve your aspirations in life. I came up to this idea because it is one of the books that we have in our shelf and It was an inspirational book that will give you facts and educational concepts about the importance of imagination and why is it important than knowledge as quoted by Albert Einstein.
disclaimer; my purpose for this article is to share the knowledge of the book and how it changed me as a person and a member of a community. Even so, I will put down my personal view and my learnings from the book. I hope you will enjoy reading this.
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The ideas I'll be putting is from the third revised edition (31st Printing) of Alex F. Osborn, L.H.D of Applied Imagination. Published in 1953.

Chapter I

The all importance of Imagination


From a functional standpoint our mental capacities might be over simplified as follows:
  1. Absorptive- the ability to observe and to apply attention.
  2. Retentive- the ability to memorize and to recall.
  3. Reasoning- the ability to analyze and to judge.
  4. Creative- the ability to visualize, to forsee, and to generate ideas.

Electronic brains can now peform these first three functions to some degrees, but it still seems certain that no machine will ever be capable of the generation of ideas. Although Dr. Albert Einstein's statement that "imagination is more important that knowledge" might be challenged, it is almost axiomatic that knowledge can be more powerful when creatively applied.
The potential power of creative imagination is all but limitless. For example, Jules Verne hardly ever left the quiet of his home; and yet he found that his imagination could take him around the world, 20,000 leagues under the sea, and even to the moon. To those who scoffed at his ideas, Jules Verne retorted: "Whatever one man is capable conceiving, other men will be able to achieve." And now we have prototypes of Verne's imaginary submarine of 70 years ago- except the the modern ones are run by atomic power.
The fact that imagination is the pristine power of the human mind has long been recognised by the greatest thinkers. They have concurred in Shakespeare's conclusion that this divine spark is what makes man "the paragon of animals."
Civilization itself is the product of creative thinking. As to what ideas have meant in the forward march of mankind, John Masefield wrote: "Man's body is faulty, his mind untrustworthy, but his imagination has made life on this planet an intense practice of all the lovelier energies."
Doctor James Harvey Robinson went even further, saying: "Were it not for slow, painful, and constantly discouraged creative effort, man would be no more than a species of primate living on seeds, fruit, roots, and uncooked flesh." No one will ever know to whom we should erect monuments for such indispensable discoveries as the use of fire. That and another creative triumph, the wheel, both came out of the Stone Age.
The main use of the wheel up until 1,000 A.D was for war chariots. Then someone had the idea of using it as a backsaver in the form of a water wheel. By the time William the Conqueror took over England, over 5,000 mills in that tiny country were driven by water power.
"It was imagination," said Victor Wagner, "that enabled man to extend his thumb by inventing the vise- to strengthen his fist and arm by inventing the hammer. Step by step, man's imagination lured, led and often pushed him to the astonishing heights of power he now so apprehensively occupies."

to be continued...

 

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