Thursday, August 10, 2006

Visceral Understanding


Sometimes science just doesn't have the answer yet. The best scientific mind knows to lead with imagination and follow up with method, standards, formulas. It has a healthy skepticism, and an honest humility. The "C" students in science who grew up to fear risk for the threat of loss of status, shut down options. They point to the past and discover nothing new - citing lack of precedent as proof.

Well not everything in this world has had scientific scrutiny. And not everything that has been examined has been seen from every angle or with the wisdom that comes with time. (We are, after all, but primates figuring out our universe as we go).

Shining pristine at the forefront of discovery is imagination, every time. The world is flat; no it's not. Lobotomies are the only cure for depression; far from it. AIDS is a gay disease; turns out it's everybody's problem. Autism is caused by bad mothering - NOT! Can't get to the moon! Can't even fly! Nothin's faster than the Pony Express!

Albert Einstein was the one who said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Perhaps before he ever said it outright, he knew it, which was what allowed him - that day when he lay daydreaming under a tree - to follow his imagination as it ran to the end of the universe. Yet, no matter how far his thoughts went, there he would be, back under the tree. This led him to envision curved space, and, being a mathematical sort, to create the special theory of relativity.

1 comment:

Irma said...

Cool!