My friend Conceição Andrade sent me this reference and I wish to share it with the AMICOR.
It recalls to me a phrase from Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than Knowledge"


August 15, 2010, 5:30 PM

Reclaiming the Imagination

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

TAGS:

IMAGINATION,PHILOSOPHY

Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome, it follows that you can’t remember being one — but you can still let your imagination rip. With a bit of effort one can even imagine the impossible, such as discovering that Dick Cheney and Madonna are really the same person. It sounds like a platitude that fiction is the realm of imagination, fact the realm of knowledge.

Why did humans evolve the capacity to imagine alternatives to reality? Was story-telling in prehistoric times like the peacock’s tail, of no direct practical use but a good way of attracting a mate? It kept Scheherazade alive through those one thousand and one nights — in the story./.../