Aubree Strickland

Chambers
Einstein Quote Response
5 January 2015
The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once said that Imagination is more important
than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while
imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. As a
scientist who greatly depended on the information he found in books to build knowledge, and
therefore formulate his theories, it seems odd that he would have said something as
unconventional as this. For anyone who knows the first thing about Einsteins personality
though, this isnt surprising.
Einstein was one of the most creative and imaginative people that ever livedand,
coincidentally, one of the most intelligent. Here he is trying to share the importance of the
connection between the two. While we may picture knowledge as solid fact that has always
existed, the truth is that it came from the minds of those who lived before us, and if you think
that this has nothing to do with creativity whatsoever, you are entirely mistaken.
One might say that, in the acquiring of knowledge firsthand, one simply observes what is
going on, and must do nothing more than record his or her observations. This statement
completely disregards the process that transforms information into practical and applicable
knowledge. If facts stayed static and unchangeable, they would remain information forever,
destined never to become the useful knowledge we need to thrive.

Creativity is the key to getting use out of our information. Without it, we would collect all
the facts we could and they would sit pointlessly on dusty shelves, and we would just keep
adding to the pile as time went on, simply replacing old, disproved theories with new ones. With
creativity, the old theories are just as important as the new ones. Creativity opens up every book
on the shelf and finds a way to apply it to any situation. This is how humanity has survived so
long and continues to thrive. Creativity allows humans to collect facts and put them together in
unique ways to create new information, and use that information to give them knowledge on
something profoundly new and all their own.
As for Einsteins mention of the ability of creativity to encompass what we know about
the entire world -- past, present, and future this is certainly true. With creativity, we can find
out more about things that happened thousands of years ago. For example, scientists observed
fossils, and observed the fact that there are no longer dinosaurs. Using their general knowledge
of life, they inferred it must have taken an event with huge impact to wipe out such a large and
wide range of creatures. They then created theories as to what could have caused this, the key
word here being created. Their creativity allowed them to travel outside of their own time frame,
and to theorize something about the condition of the whole world in the Mesozoic Era.
The same can be said about the future in regards to extrapolation. Scientists can take data
they have now and estimate future populations, global warming rates, and even how far the
continental landmasses will move. The last example is also an instance in which an old theory
continental drift was used to not only apply practically to a present phenomenon, but also to
predict a future one. This is where the real creative connection begins to gain importance.
Besides the many uses creativity has in science, it also, of course, has the obvious use in
art. Creativity gives people the ability to make something so powerful that it affects others on

both subconscious and unconscious levels. It allows us to make the intangible things like
emotion visible and tangible, giving us profound connections with each other that could not be
achieved through other means or a lack of creativity. Our creative connections also give us more
knowledge of these human emotional traits such as empathy, sorrow and storytelling. When we
understand and connect with someone through art, we end up learning more about ourselves and
also begin to make generalizations about mankind through experiments in trial and error.
In the end, creativity embodies nothing if not diversity. If there is no one to think
differently about what we already know, we cannot expect to see change in the world. We need
the innovators and the thinkers, those that can do both well and make something of it. The people
who will change the world are those who bring hard work and study, but often we leave out the
creativity clause. We simply say that historys greats had great minds. They could understand
the science, and they could do the math. But what Einstein was trying to tell us is that all of this
doesnt matter unless we can see far enough ahead to change our futures before we get there, and
far enough behind to use the knowledge we gained long ago. The present is for connecting. We
continually find ways to bond with the rest of our world, and we create ways to go beyond our
borders.