One Picture 1000 Words

The saying that one picture is worth a thousand words is wrongly attributed to Confucius. It was actually coined by an early American advertising manager, Fred R. Barnard. He wrote it as copy for an ad that appeared in Printers' Ink in 1927. The ad, in turn, promoted the sale of yet other ad space on the sides of city streetcars. His pitch was that an ad with a large picture on the side of a fast moving streetcar would be quickly and easily ‘read’ by pedestrians.

The saying fast gained wide currency. This isn’t surprising. It succinctly expresses what people already intuitively understood. Given its resonance and given the advent of mass communications advertising, it was bound to spread. That Barnard unethically called it a Chinese proverb is an even more revealing insight about the power of images and the social imagination. Clearly he wanted to give the saying a patina of legitimacy by associating it with an ancient culture. It almost immediately became ascribed to Confucius.

This too isn’t surprising. Confucius had been known in the West since the 1600s, thanks to Jesuit missionaries. Later, leading philosophers such as Voltaire embraced Confucian ideas such as atheistic philosophy and political morality and ethics. By the early 20th century, Confucius was well ensconced in the popular Western mind as a symbol of wisdom. Paradoxically, Bernard’s false attribution registered authentic precisely because one could easily imagine Confucius saying it. It isn’t just that the Chinese alphabet is composed of ideograms, or word pictures, thus giving the attribution extra credibility. It’s rather because Barnard’s saying actually embodies timeless wisdom. He simply brought this to light in ‘modern’ times.

A New Earth

The European Organisation 
for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere reports that: “Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date...and capable of having liquid water...it orbits a red dwarf... [There’s] also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet”

The implications are immense. As Xavier Delfosse, one of astronomers, states: “On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X”. What a profound insight wrapped in such apt whimsy. This reminds me somehow of that beautiful hadith; I was a hidden treasure longing to be known.

Over fifty years ago, Henri Corbin suggested "that the most astounding information of modern science regarding the physical universe remains inferior to [the Imagination].” Yet, some of Lene Hau’s fellow scientists discouraged her from trying her ultimately successful experiments desribed in the previous post, saying they couldn’t be done. Imagination liberates vision, and gives hope a map to steer by.

Transmuting Light Into Matter

"Lene Hau has already shaken scientists' beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic…. Now Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Hau has done it again. She and her team made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then retrieved it from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted into matter then back into light. For the first time in history, this gives science a way to control light with matter and vice versa… It's a thing that most scientists never thought was possible. Some colleagues had asked Hau, "Why try that experiment? It can't be done।"

Pixelation

There’s a wonderful scene in Frank Capra’s 1936 film - Mr. Deeds Goes To Town - in which the hero is characterized as being pixilated. Longfellow Deeds is on trial to prove his sanity because he wants to give away his large fortune to the needy. The big-city legal team representing Deed’s rich, greedy relations have called two elderly sisters from his small town as witnesses. It’s they who call him pixilated. By this they meant Deeds typically behaved in a whimsical way and often seemed intoxicated.

This term was used throughout rural America in the nineteenth century. It likely stems from the Celtic pixy. A pixy is defined as a supernatural being with magical powers; a fairy, an elf. Many of the early American colonists came from the Celtic regions of Great Britain -Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales. In these regions, it was believed from ancient times that someone who encountered pixies would become disoriented, bewildered, and often lost to this world. It was also believed that a pixie-path linked the two overlapping worlds. The person who has stepped over the boundary between 'them' and 'us' is in both places at the same time. Many…have experienced a dislocation in time: a short while…may be months or even years in human time.

This pervasive mythos reflects a deep but inchoate societal understanding of the power of imagination to mediate reality. Longfellow Deeds appeared pixilated because his orientation was different than the norm. He has seen farther and deeper into the nature of life and cannot help but be affected. His story is that of all the light bearers, from Plato’s Cave onwards. And he too pays a price. In many societies, for example, the blacksmith is someone who must live apart because of their particular skill. That is, mysteriously forging hard raw iron into implements of great utility and beauty using fire, force, and art. Often, for these same reasons, the blacksmith was also seen as a wizard and healer.

The concept of pixie dust is a delightfully apt metaphor for this transmutation of imagination into manifestation. I haven’t yet located a good historic source for when this concept first appears. It is popularly defined on Wikipedia as the trail of sparkling material that often follows mythical creatures such as pixies and fairies in general when they are visually represented. Sometimes, this trail is interpreted as being a tangible substance, often imbued with magic powers. The most notable example of this is in the 1953 Disney version of Peter Pan, where pixie dust allows one to fly if one is thinking happy thoughts, specifically the song "You can fly".

You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!
Soon you'll zoom all around the room

All it takes is faith and trust
But the thing that's a positive must
Is a little bit of pixie dust

The dust is a positive must
You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!

You can fly! You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!
When there's a smile in your heart

There's no better time to start
It's a very simple plan

You can do what the birdies can

At least it's worth a try

You can fly! You can fly! 
You can fly! You can fly!
Music: Sammy Fain 
& Lyrics: Sammy Cahn

Positive Imagination

Longfellow Deeds may well have been led down the pixie path. But society is enriched by his wise enchantment. This idea of positively imagining our worlds and our selves anew is at the heart of such tales as The Ugly Duckling, Pygmalion, and A Christmas Carol. Frank Capra directed yet another classic film in this vein called It’s A Wonderful Life. In this 1946 story, the hero - George Bailey- faces ruin at every turn no matter how great his efforts or good his intentions. He’s on the verge of jumping off a bridge when he hears someone below drowning in the dark night and calling for help. Instinctively, because of innate decency, he dives into the water to save the individual. This turns out to be an angel-in-training named Clarence. He too is striving to earn his wings, also without success. In fact, he’s been told that George represents his last chance to turn things around for both of them, hence the ruse. Clarence then helps stretch George’s imagination beyond belief. As he says to our hapless hero: You've been given a great gift, George: A chance to see what the world would be like without you.. After several more trials, George returns to the world a changed man. And Clarence, who symbolizes his higher angelic self, is transfigured.

Trans-Pixelation
There are two distinct pixelations currently used in the English language. And while they share the same spelling and pronunciation, their meanings and origins are decidedly different. The first term, described above, represents the illogical, irrational, and magical world of imagination. The other is used in contemporary digital imaging, where there are no true curves. This becomes immediately apparent to the naked eye when a digital image is magnified. Instead of the seamless smooth sweep of an arc, one sees a series of stair like gradations. This is referred to as pixelation. It’s been suggested that this graphic design problem will be solved when the square is finally circled.

We seem to intuitively grasp that the power of positive imagination is a nexus between what is and might be. Yet this awareness largely remains inchoate and implicit. We reveal it to ourselves indirectly and beguilingly through our stories, myths, legends, and worldviews. Interestingly, pixie dust, an imaginary concept, is now being consciously used as a reference point within science and technology. For example, Don Brownlee, principal investigator for the Stardust initiative, and his colleagues are studying the organic molecular composition of Wild Comet २. Their findings are challenging fundamental notions about the origins of life. Brownlee states that if all takes pixie dust to get life going and it has all these magical organics, it could be very significant. A lot of this stuff got flung all around the early solar system। [The photo above is of the coma of dust and gas around Comet Wild २ and the one below is a representation of smart dust.]

This semantic confluence of the worlds of imagination and reality seems to be gathering speed and power. For example, in 2001 IBM introduced a hard disk technology using a layer of a precious metal called ruthenium, three atoms thick. Engineers also whimsically called this pixie dust because of its seemingly magical qualities. There’s yet another technological equivalent of pixie dust. Smart dust is composed of hundreds of individual mechanical motes, the size of a grain of sand. Each mote has sensors, computational capacity, wireless connectivity, and a power source. Smart dust clouds will be used to access information that otherwise might be dangerous or difficult to obtain such as tracking enemy movements in war or monitoring a buildings heating and lighting conditions.

Light & Imagination

There’s a wonderful and growing literature on the relation between imagination and light. This goes back to antiquity and encompasses the work of such luminaries as Suhrawardi, Corbin, and Cooperrider. I believe imagination, like sunlight, is instantly and easily accessible, ubiquitous, inexhaustible, and endlessly transformative.

Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. Curiously, the word ‘imagination’ is still rarely found in public discourse and policy. Consider, for example, the Partnership for the 21st Century, a consortium of American business, education, and policy makers. In its landmark report, Learning for the 21st Century, the word knowledge is mentioned 47 times, imagination not once. In fairness to the Partnership, this is a widespread social phenomenon. Googling ‘knowledge’ generates 1,720,000,000 links; ‘imagination’ generates only १३८,०००,००० or ०८% in comparison.

Children enter school just brimming with imagination. They’re masters of make believe and visualization, honed through years of preschool play.However, given schooling’s focus on tests and scores, imagination doesn’t figure much in formal curricula. Most students therefore leave school with a greatly diminished capacity. The community and workforce are poorer for it too given just how crucial imagination is to knowledge creation and innovation.

There are deep historic and cultural reasons why this particular faculty has been so devalued. It has defied precise definition, despite some of the greatest minds, precisely because of its

inherent irrationality. However, imagination is being enfranchised anew in the global knowledge economy. Consider, for example, the recent observation by Thomas Friedman, NY Times editorialist and author of the World Is Flat - "If whatever can be done will be done...the biggest competition is between you and your imagination". General Electric's corporate tag line is "imagination at work' and one oft its website states" "The human imagination is one of our most valuable resources".