Logic & imagination aren’t such strange bedfellows

August 9, 2013

Life Quotes and Images
I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty logical person, able to find the path from A to Z pretty quickly.  For many years, though, that’s come at the cost of imagination.  It’s one of the reasons I write creative nonfiction/personal essays–fiction takes imagination that I didn’t think I had.

So when I saw this Albert Einstein quote, it stopped me in my tracks.

The best scientists understand logic very well. At the same time, though, without imagination they’d never see the possibilities of what that logic revealed.  All great discoveries have required both logic and great imagination–the two are linked in ways I’m only now beginning to see.

When kids ask parents, “tell me a story?” it challenges the adults to flex those creative muscles. Since I didn’t have children of my own, I didn’t get to work my mind out in that way.  Imagination-wise, I’ve come a long way, but I’m interested in going further.

So, asking–what have you done to develop or exercise your imagination?

13 comments on “Logic & imagination aren’t such strange bedfellows
  1. Love, love, love this. You know my battle cry: “We got 2 sides to our brains; LET’S USE BOTH OF ‘EM!” I am logical by nature. My imagination gets stretched a million different ways every day: collaging, decorating, drawing, problem-solving, cooking etc. etc. I credit a lot of it to all the million & one things I learned as a Waldorf parent: storytelling, painting. creative play, celebrating festivals imaginatively, ad infinitum.

  2. kquintana says:

    What a great quote! I think that both logic and imagination are needed to get anything done, not just in writing, but in the workplace too. Sometimes it takes just stepping out of that box and trying new things to get the creative juices going. Trying something new always opens the door to new possibilities.

  3. Susan Cooper says:

    Spot On Quote!!! You really need a good balance between logic and imagination to really live life. Use your imagination to let you go WILD and your logic to reign you in when needed. 🙂

  4. My midlife crisis, which started in 2001, has challenged my imagination a plenty! Losing my job and career showed me how far logic could take me. Logic got me into a dead end life plan.
    That was when I decided to USE MY IMAGINATION and intuition to guide me in whole new directions. After I met a new love at 49 and started a whole new career, it is now guiding me towards a much better alternative to traditional retirement in the U.S. Ecuador, here I come!

  5. Rochelle says:

    I agree that it’s important that we have both sides. I keep my imagination active with my children. I tell them stories, we make up songs together, and I learn a lot from the stories they come up with. I have a group of teenage girls I am a youth leader over and during our camp outs they always beg me to tell them scary stories. That’s quite a challenge to come up with them as I’m telling them. On top of that I write fiction. I definitely see where the two collide. You need logic and imagination and then with the two combined you can go anywhere.

  6. Nancy Hill says:

    I call myself a logical creative. To understand what we are doing and where our actions will probably lead requires both logical reasoning and the ability to extrapolate. The later requires imagination. Thanks for writing on this topic!

  7. Brian D. Meeks says:

    I exercise my imagination by asking the question, “What if…?” I ask it a bunch.

    As an analyst for GEICO I was able to find actionable data in a annual analysis that had been done for 15 years without any valuable results. I simply asked “What if I did…” and then approached the study differently.

    It is the same “What if…” that helps me write novels. I am a pantster, meaning I don’t outline or plan my books. I write the beginning and then ask “What if…”. It has gotten me to the end of the story every time.

    I’ve read that writing does NOT use the artistic centers of the brain, but the analytical. I have no idea if the people who wrote that were theorizing or stating fact, but I believe it to be true.

    Great post. 🙂

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