Imagination and Knowledge

After my last post I decided I want to write another one this month, since I like to cool off and give any readers I might have a break when I go on tears about technology, law, and society.  I didn't have a good topic that I wanted to talk about, though, so I asked my wife what she thought I should write on.  She provided a one word prompt: imagination.  I decided to go with this, but having something so broad I needed to keep looking.  A few internet searches later I happened upon some Einstein quotes around, Imagination is more important than knowledge."  In that way I have I said to myself, "¿Is it?" and then I realized I had a topic for a post.

I think considering imagination and knowledge more important than one another is actually a little misguided.  They're different entities that have different purposes and bring differing benefits to a person or society.  It's like saying hammers are more important than saws or potatoes are more important than chairs.  And we can often get by with only one.  But, these are two forces that gain the greatest power when working together.

Knowledge is a foundation.   Knowledge tells us how the world and things in it work, how to do things, and how things are connected.  Imagination gives us the capability to see how these facts could be different, improved, or superseded.  But using imagination rarely can make a strong impact if we're without the knowledge to back this up.  Knowledge lets us reasonably examine the ways in which the things we imagine might play out, so that when we try to put those things we imagine into reality the chance that we're successful is higher.

My love for Star Trek was recently re-kindled by a collection of online reviews of works in the franchise and one thing that's been striking is that one of the most impressive things about the franchise was its ability to imagine the future in a very different yet very reasonable way.  Social issues such as race, ethnicity, and sex becoming less important to a team that works together.   Also, amazingly, the science of instantaneous point to point transportation, faster than light travel, and futuristic weaponry (though it was changed later, the original meaning of the term "phaser" was "photonic maser" which, while actually redundant since the microwaves a maser produces are made up of photons, points toward the laser which does indeed exist and could be weaponized).  Many of the high points of the series' are when this works to add believably and a feeling of reality to the impossible,and failures of the series often occur thanks to imagination being backed up by too little knowledge.