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
