Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge

Albert Einstein is a famous and accomplished theoretical physicist, which is why, at first, it seems odd to question his words. However, it is not forbidden to think about them. Imagination is one powerful tool in life; artists require loads of it but mere imagination is not enough, we wouldn't go really far in life without knowledge. What is imagination? I personally see it as a creative way of thinking; as the capacity to invent, create and reproduce. Now, what about knowledge? Even the greatest philosophers, writers, thinkers haven't succeeded in giving a universally satisfying answer; Plato confirms that point of view saying that "knowledge is true opinion"1. My belief is that knowledge comes by researching, by observing, but mostly, from questioning. And isn't questioning imagining that there is another possible answer? My opinion is that imagination and knowledge need to coexist.

What is knowledge if we deprive it from imagination in any form of Art? The artist that interests me is the one who lives in the moment, inspired by his emotions and imagination; an artist driven by this imaginary world, yearning to know more, about his own reality. My portray of the artist is very dependant on imagination even though he obviously needs reason to organize and focus his creative ideas. I'm passionate about theatre and to me, this art needs as much knowledge and imagination. For instance, to enter into a character, I first need to understand him, looking for facts and visions. Acting isn't a free art, one needs to obey, using his creativeness. Here we could think that imagination comes first, that it is more important than knowledge, but inspiration isn't something that magically appears, it comes from our subconscious, knowledge that we've already acquired. An actor usually looks for guidance into emotions lived in past situations or observations; it is only then that he can recreate them in a more personal way. He needs to exaggerate a feeling, occasionally by deforming reality; same for a painter who paints without a model, or even for a writer, they would still base their imagination on a combination of experiences, feelings and observations. However, an artist also needs to separate himself from the world, to a certain extent, in order to forget and create. But there are things we cannot know without learning them before, like writing music notes, for example. On the other hand, stones weren't invented by anybody but artists can turn them into something completely different, as a sculpture. We know there are five main positions in ballet, but these were imagined and created by Beauchamps2. In that particular case, knowledge would come from imagination.

Art is something liberating; it can be subnormal. Imagining is to see the abnormal in the normal, therefore, imagination should come first in arts, but it's not always that easy to forget the rules. This might be why some artists would get drunk before creating, because this way they can feel freer, they can explore other ways of thinking. They can start achieving works, following the flow of their minds, instinctively, without fear of doing something wrong, as fear is created by what we know, leading the mind in the wrong direction, since art is meant to release, (however, this isn't always the case).

Acting showed me the abstract of the world; by changing its colours. It allowed me to drift away in an imaginary reality, the time of a play; to reprint a movement, to interpret the universe. By evolving in the fictive, the real can become unreal; imagination can turn into knowledge and knowledge into imagination. However, illusion is an imitation and not corruption of the truth; it allows one think and to deduce; by giving feelings, answers and questions.

Knowledge without imagination wouldn't exist because if an artist cannot see further than what is shown to him, he just cannot discover anything new. People need to see beyond what's presented to them in order to understand and discover. Without imagination, the world would loose all its richness, all its beauty, all its art and all its knowledge; as Einstein said: "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination"3 However, this is only partly true; imagination alone is as worthless as a heart without a brain; imagination cannot beat without knowledge. As Einstein pointed: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them"4, which is why, imagination is the key to produce, to find another way of knowing, to then know more. We need to navigate in both sides of our brain in order to be and imagination is a smart way to attain knowledge.

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