Description
ALL HUMAN BEINGS, to a greater or lesser degree, possess the imaginative faculty. Whether this talent per se can be enlarged by training is questionable. The point is that the student can be trained to use more productively the talent which he innately possesses. This training is subject to disciplines similar to those applicable to the mastery of any subject. Incidentally, creative imagination is itself a basic tool in the acquisition of knowledge; for, knowledge becomes more usable when imaginatively synthesised and dynamically extended.
Importance: The history of civilisation is essentially the record of man's creative ability. Imagination is the corner- stone of human endeavour; it is, without doubt, responsible for man's survival as an animal; and it has caused him, as a human being, to conquer the world. It may well lead him to subdue the universe. The harnessing of atomic energy was a spectacular triumph of human imagination over almost insuperable odds. Modern society, with its emphasis upon the progressive synthesis of technological and pure science, is admittedly dependent upon imagination as its life-blood. It is axiomatic that to think intelligently is to think creatively.
National Need: "Let us suppose," said Professor Harry Overstreet, "that creative power is possessed by everybody; and that there are ways of stimulating and of training it which are capable of increasing it far beyond its latent condition. Education would be revolutionised. Its major energies would be directed toward the arousing and training of the inventive powers. A society alive with inventive power would, on the whole, be the most powerfully progressive society."
ISBN:APPLIEDIMAGIN
