Sometime during the 1970s I was in the audience hearing W. Edward Demming (1900-1993) speak about his creation of Total Quality Management, a manufacturing process that putatively helped Toyota and other foreign auto makers to catapult over the U.S. in auto sales.
One of his remarks particularly caught my attention. "Knowledge is everything," he confidently professed. I timidly spoke up, saying, "With all due respect, sir, how the knowledge is used is everything." I did not elaborate, and the session ended.
Years later still, I resurrected this subject and consulted posthumously perhaps the most intelligent person the world has ever known, Albert Einstein (1879-1955). He claimed that imagination is more important than knowledge.
His opinion makes imminent sense to me, and daily living validates it. If you are reading this article at night, you did so without giving it much thought. You turned on a light that was imagined by a series of inventors, most notably Thomas Edison. Christopher Columbus had never seen personally or a map of the "new America", but he imagined it existed. Benjamin Franklin imagined the existence of electricity before he found it. And so, it goes on and on.
Imagination does have a downside though. If you should ever imagine and tell people about your imagined apparatus or idea, be prepared to be ridiculed, as was, e.g., Mr. Edison, Benjamin Franklin, etc., etc.
The Psychology of Imagination
Does my profession of psychology have anything worth saying about imagination? One would certainly think so. Pertinent research by the eminent late psychologist Dr. Edwin A. Fleishman (1927-2021) and his colleagues revealed 57 human abilities, none of which was "imagination". Perhaps the closest ability was "originality", defined as "the ability to produce unusual or clever responses related to a given topic or situation." [1] The idea and existence of "imagination" does seem to meet the definition of "originality". Was I, e.g., being original in my writings many times by imagining them beforehand, or was I simply thinking about their content? In any case why would anyone but pedants, or simpletons, give a hoot?
In Closing
I imagine/think readers have had enough by now! In any case, I tip my hat to imagination over knowledge. I am not about to refute Albert Einstein!
Note
1. Fleishman, E.A., Quaintance, M.K. and Broedling, L.A. Taxonomies of Human Performance: The description of human tasks. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, Inc. 1984.
