To imagine something is almost like understanding it

To imagine something is almost like understanding it¹

• Unexpectedly! Fresh and great idea. When I read anything, I usually imagine what is happening or what should happen.
  • If it’s a non-fiction book, then I construct certain situations that are related to the topic I am researching.
  • Hence, the assumption, that to understand something, note-taking is not enough, we have to have strength and cognitive prowess to see ideas in the mind’s eye.
  • Thinking in a sense is an idea generation process. Obviously, we can’t teach thinking critically, but can we train imagination?
    • Maybe, but I don’t know any books that can do this. I have to compile the set of tools that might be useful for creative thinking.
    • Rodari Gianni has written a book “Grammar of Fantasy”², which has something in it. And Propp also had his hands in the topic of imagination in “The Morphology of the Fairy tale”³
  • Granik said that imagination is a deliberated process, I have used another work for this, imagination management.
    • It’s a strange and difficult thing at the core.
      • To be good at imagination, we have to notice what we don’t understand.
      • The roots of understanding grow from seeing the limitations of knowledge.
      • We, humans, rarely know what we don’t know. It’s called unidentified ignorance.
      • The only mean to overcome it, is our imagination. First the process will be tiring, to say the least, then we can turn on the screen of meaning on demand, and then it becomes automatic, like Feynman’s imagination.

Imagination can become a substitution for experience

• Every person has a limited experience, and most importantly, limited background.
  • In this sense, imagination can become this lacking experience.
  • It allows us to see a new perspective, from someone else’s eyes. More often than not, the view is much richer than personal. Like reading a book about physics, by Deutsch or Feynman. I don’t know anything about fundamental physics, but thanks to their books I know something from there.
• The majority of people lack imagination not because they don’t have it, but because they don’t want to.
  • One of the reasons is that imagination requires effort, and as with any effortful process, we tend to play truant. We don’t want to overtax ourselves.
  • In my head, there is the best in the world cinema. When I read, not only I imagine and see everything that unfolds on the pages of the book, I also taste the food and feel the elements.
    • These demands practice and volumes of reading books.
    • But there are some shortcuts, like questions you can ask yourself.
    • Or bisociative thinking.
    • Combination and substitution of prepositions is also a nice tool to have in a toolbox.
      • Almost all tools of creative thinking might apply here.

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Footnotes

1. 1. Поварнин С. Искусство спора. Как читать книги / С. Поварнин, 1924. (Page 228), (Page 230)
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2. 1. Джанни Р. Грамматика фантазии / Р. Джанни,.
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3. 1. Пропп В. Морфология волшебной сказки / В. Пропп,.
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