Imagine!

Read the following:

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Who do you think said that?

Even if you can't name the person, any guesses on what that person--a famous one--was known for?

The keyword there is "imagination," right?  And this imagination is linked to knowledge. And the quote begins with "artist."

We might be tempted to think that it was a famous person in the arts.  That's what I would have thought.

Think again.

It was Einstein!

Aha, you say, because we are immediately reminded of Einstein's famous thought-experiment approach to big questions.

It is not only Einstein.  Science itself requires imagination.

[It] doesn’t take an Albert Einstein to observe that, without the essential first step, without a creative reimagining of nature, a conceiving of hypotheses for what might be going on behind the perceived surface of phenomena, there can be no science at all.

Now think about your own science classes.  Did you ever get a feel that science called for imagination?  To the contrary, chances are great that the classes came across as one boring thing to memorize after another boring thing, right?  I tell ya, every day I am amazed that we humans have progressed this much despite our best attempts to kill curiosity, learning, and imagination.  As Picasso--another imaginative mind, though a thoroughly flawed human--said, through schooling we make sure that students do not become artists!

Science education favours the presentation of results, and a focus on knowledge, rather than the human stories of wonder, imagination, failed ideas and those glorious and uninvited moments of illumination that thread through the lives of all who actually do science.

The older I get, the more I am frustrated by our screwed up approach to education.

I have blogged before on the role of imagination in science.  Like here, in which I quote Freeman Dyson:

Science is a creative interaction of observation with imagination. ... Imagination by itself can still enlarge our vision when observation fails. 

Of course, the imagination is cross-checked by experiments and evidence, which is why string theory, for example, hasn't broken through--great imagination, but no proof. At least, not yet.

I have always known that I lack that kind of imagination.  But, as I noted here:

Education and learning are perhaps also about stretching one's imaginations.  It is easy to walk around with a limited view of the world, but is a challenge to expand that view.

I try my best to get that view across to students and colleagues alike, even though I know fully well that I am not winning.