Imagination is our tool for discovering the unknown
Leonardo da Vinci. While the sketch represents studies of military tank-like machines, including one at the top with horses pulling a contraption with revolving scythes, it can easily be an inspiration for a space ship. Date: 1485 (circa). Credit: The British Museum.
We discover the world with an instinct that drives us to see the unseen and imagine what doesn't yet exist. The initial spark begins with a simple question: "What if?" Imagination, in essence, is a hidden mirror to reality. Although it may seem at first glance separate from it, or a means of escaping it, it is what grants humans the ability to transcend the familiar boundaries of knowledge in science, art, and even the details of daily life. It is a tool for discovering the unknown, redefining the known, and proposing what cannot yet be proven.
In science, the most important theories and major discoveries were merely imaginary visions until they were proven by numbers, equations, and experiments. We were never satisfied with what is; we tried to envision what could be, and in our imaginations, we drew models of the universe before seeking evidence to prove them. Theories such as gravity, relativity, atomic theory, quantum mechanics, and others (all of which transformed our understanding of the world) were initially nothing more than imaginary ideas.
In one of the first attempts at flight in history, Abbas Ibn Firnas didn't actually see flight, but he imagined it, trying to mimic birds with wings he made himself. Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham paved the way for the invention of what he had never imagined, the camera, after arriving at a conception of the laws of light and its transitions. Leonardo da Vinci blended reality with imagination. In one of his drawings dating back to 1485, we see a study of shapes resembling war machines: chariots equipped with rotating blades pulled by horses. In today's language, its construction suggests a first vision of a spaceship, but it was designed in the Renaissance for military purposes. Is there a real line between reality and fantasy?
Through imagination and serious effort, man created airplanes, crossed the seas, and reached space.
In technology, artificial intelligence began with a crazy idea: Imagine machines that think and behave like humans! Basic sciences intertwined in the emergence and development of this idea, each adding a cognitive or technical foundation that contributed to its emergence as the form we know today. Between philosophy, mathematics, computer science, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and linguistics, artificial intelligence has become a reality that intertwines with the details of our daily lives.
In art, imagination is merely its essence: an attempt to understand what we cannot see, but feel, thus documenting it and a way to re-understand life from a broader perspective. The painter conveys a scene as he feels it, not as he sees it. The photographer captures the moment he dreams of. The writer creates new worlds. The musician hears notes not yet played. The sculptor sees forms hidden within a block of stone. Art, at its core, is a daily exercise in exploring the possible and rediscovering the familiar through imagination.
In daily life, we run through its paths, imagining scenarios that have not yet occurred, and transcending the limits of current circumstances. Imagination is the inexhaustible and unwavering impetus that drives simple decisions. Like everything precious, it does not spring from a vacuum, but rather thrives in environments that embrace it, believe in its freedom and importance, allow it to expand and experiment, and celebrate it with a flame that precedes every achievement.
