Knowledge or Creativity?

They are related, but which is more important?

Open Mind has already crossed sweet 16 in terms of number of articles and I am simply thrilled with the reader interest expressed through the wide range of your questions. Many of them have already become the seeds of entire columns and will continue to do so. So keep writing in. Who knows, your question may appear here and enlighten others as well.

Shailesh Aggarwal
Can we can materialise anything from our imagination? Let’s say I want to sell my house at a good price. If I keep thinking about it with focused willpower, will my desire be fulfilled?
Shailesh, in one of my earlier columns I had pointed out the AIDA - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action pathway. First meditate on your desire (which should be positive not negative), and if it is really warranted, move on to Action i.e. orienting your subconscious accordingly through clear intentions and appropriate affirmations along with “creative visualisation”. Remember even Alladin’s Genie appeared only after Alladin made the effort of rubbing the magic lamp.

Devendra Ambekar 
I appreciate your articles on memory enhancement, but I would like to know how much of the information we read, we hear and see, we usually remember.
The numbers vary greatly depending upon the individual. Some people are visual learners, remembering things that they see very well. Other people are audio learners, remembering what they hear. And still others learn best by doing things.

But we forget what we learn very quickly. A day after a lesson if we have done nothing with the information we learned and didn’t think about it again or read it again, we will lose 50 to 80 per cent of what we learnt. Seven days later, we remember even less, and by day 30, we retain only about two to three per cent of the original!

In short we remember things much better if we go over concepts or lessons very soon after we first learnt them. If we spend 10 minutes reviewing the information on the same day that we receive it, we will remember almost all we learnt.Because it is then moved from your short-term memory into long-term memory.Even a week later, if we take five minutes to “reactivate” the same material, we can still retain almost 100 per cent.

An ancient Chinese proverb says “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”. That is all what learning is about.

Priyanka Waghre 
I found the concept of “Nexting” interesting. Is it the same as “expecting”
Surprise is an emotion we feel when we encounter the unexpected. Because feelings of surprise are generally accompanied by reactions that can be observed and measured - such as eyebrow arching, widening of the eye, dropping of the jaw and characteristic noises, psychologists can use them to tell them when a brain is nexting. Let me clarify by saying that while our mind expects, our brains nexts.

Ramesh Iyer 
How are knowledge, creativity and imagination inter-related, and which one is more important.
Ramesh, the best answer comes from Albert Einstein, one of our greatest ever scientists, who said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Imaginative feats such as Einstein’s general relativity are rare, resulting in a completely new idea, which, still remains too conceptual and abstruse for most of us to grasp. This is great science and great art.

So, can a scientist ever be a great artist? Yes!
Can an artist ever be a great scientist? Absolutely.

However, can a great scientist ever be a great artist? Or is one intrinsically the other.

Again let me quote Einstein : ”The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”.

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Thought for the Week

“When I was younger, 
I could remember anything, 
whether it had happened or not.”
Mark Twain
American Author (1835-1910)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times