The imagination is one of the most powerful faculties of the mind or indeed of human beings generally. It was the poet W. B. Yeats who said: “The imagination has some way of lighting on the truth which reason has not … and its commandments are the most binding we can ever know.” But then he was a poet, so he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Then again the great scientist Einstein, said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” So you’d think the case was closed; which is to say that imagination is staggeringly important to our life? Yet sadly, very few people take imagination seriously. And sadder still: take their own imagination seriously.
This comes out in all sorts of ways, but to take one example: literary criticism. I know a significant number of critics who regard Charles Dickens as a great novelist (and I am not saying that he is not of course). Why? Principally, because he’s “realistic” – because he deals with “life” – and he depicts conditions as they were. But almost to a man they turn their noses up at Tolkien because “it’s all fantasy…silly hobbits…ridiculous scenarios” and they simply can’t buy what is fantastical. If things are not rooted in the practical, in the believable, then they just have no value.
My friend Helen Orme, writer and mathematician, told me a wonderful story the other day that consolidated the power of the imagination in a most surprising way.
She was telling me about the mathematical number “i”. For those unfamiliar with it “i” is the letter standing for the number which reflects the square root of minus one and “i” was chosen because it stands for “imaginary”. In short, there cannot be a number which is the square root of minus one – it is pure fantasy – and so the letter “i” stands in its place.
A moment’s thought tells you why there can be no actual real result. The square root of a number is the number which multiplied by itself creates the original number. For example, the square root of 4 is 2 because 2 x 2 = 4. The problem with the number -1 is that two negative numbers multiplied together (remember they have to be the same number) produce a positive number: so -1 x -1 = +1. Equally, two positive numbers produce a positive number. So there cannot be a number multiplied by itself to produce -1, hence the introduction of “i”.
But what’s the point of that? Well, as Helen pointed out to me, this extremely imaginary number – which can’t exist – has all sorts of interesting properties and solves some profound and practical real life problems – for example, in meteorology and electricity and so on.
What doesn’t exist seems to support and solve existential questions for what does! I am reminded of the Tao Te Ching and its concept of nothingness which frames everything: there can’t be a bowl without the hollow – or ‘nothing’ – that the wood curves round. So too with a window: it is the spaces – or nothing – between the frames that enable the window to be a window and let in light.
And so, isn’t “God” too an “i” – an imaginary number, seemingly impossible, and yet without whom the equations of life do not work?
It is interesting how “i” works particularly in the field of meteorology – which way the winds blow – and electricity – how power goes down the line and is stored – all very God-like activities.
So next time people start getting heavy about “reality” and “proof” and what they can see with their own eyes, tell them to remember “i” – the imaginary is at the heart of all things and enables reality to function.
The Mapping Motivation Series 