Before “Imagination is more important than knowledge”

Author: PIRANAT PINVISES

THE QUOTE

You might have heard people saying things about Einstein's popular quote; “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, and ironically, just to point out how one can always get away with not-having-to-learn and use imagination instead. In fact, if you take into the context the full “quote” from Einstein’s interview published by Saturday evening post in 1929 which is;

[Viereck] “If we owe so little to the experience of others, how do you account for sudden leaps forward in the sphere of science? Do you ascribe your own discoveries to intuition or inspiration?”

[Einstein] “I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.”

[Viereck] “Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?”

[Einstein] “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination.Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

IN THE MATTER OF...

Relatively, Einstein was trying to point out how he able to discover those groundbreaking theories that affect most of everything in the world today. And of course, one of the most widely known theories of his; (“Relativity: The special and general theory”). As the “Saturday Evening Post” article has pointed out. I think Einstein does believe everything has no absolute, the only way you can truly measure something effectively is to “compare” it with other “reference”, so to speak. Looking back into the quote, Einstein immediately defined why, because “for knowledge it is limited”. And here is where I would like to remark boldly. Because if you think about it, one would find his knowledge is limited only when he/she had been through it thoroughly. Frankly, you only find knowledge limited when you have one. Also, Einstein also said,

“Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.”

- Einstein, Albert. Ideas And Opinions (p. 271). Crown Publishing Group.

From this quote we will see that Einstein always gives value to knowledge, he even worked at the patent office. That’s where all legitimate knowledge been submitted to. Only that he values “Imagination” further compared to knowledge. As he said it was the origin of knowledge itself. By curiosity, it creates the will to discover what’s unknown. That’s imagination in action. But soon after that, one will need appropriate knowledge if not numerous, to proceed to the level where imagination comes into play again.

So for those who always have that “quote” without surrounding context of the quote itself, to argue when someone throw technical stuff into the conversation. The “Imagination” without any “knowledge” is “phony” or “daydream”. When a person put any statement without decent supportive factors, it shall lead to even more false statements eventually. That kind of action which tries to deny everything could be viewed as another form of “Anarchism”, or is it not?

While those situations sound familiar, it felt even more familiar when you think about it, in our society, there are lots of people living by this false statement hoping they get away with anything they said and done. Could those caused by a starting point that one could not even support its own thoughts with realistic factors then lead to an even further downfall of ethical ideology in the long run? Let’s hope we do not come into the era when people failed to be rational as presented in the movie “Idiocracy”

As industrial designers, we were trained to use our imagination frequently throughout our academic education. Even having methods to quench, if not squeeze, to the subconscious level possible. But yet we always aware of how useless imagination is without supporting factor of some sort, either statistically and philosophically. A “well designed” piece of product is all about solutions to problems and in almost every, if not all cases there are reasons behind every curve on every portion of it can contain. And those ‘problems’ cannot exist only by imagination, there will always be causes.

As Earth is not floating by itself; the reason it has not yet collide with other surrounding rocks floating around is that there is the force of gravity. The imagination itself cannot manifest into reality without actual media that already manifested inside reality.

There is a good read on how you can make use of imagination effectively in different aspects; The power of imagination

Another good read on the quote; Is imagination more important than knowledge?

References:

http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/the-power-of-imagination-1553363-Jul2014/

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/03/20/history/post-perspective/imagination-important-knowledge.html

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35557727

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/01/einstein-imagination/

http://www.simplethingcalledlife.com/stcl/knowledge-experience-quote/

Einstein, Albert. Ideas And Opinions. Crown Publishing Group.