“Imagination is the highest form of research.”
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
-Albert Einstein, What Life Means to Einstein (1924)
Perhaps you’ve been told that there are two ways of learning something, either by experience or by example. We can either learn something by doing it ourselves, or watching someone else do it (or hear their story). But those two things are less than 1/2 of actual learning.
Experience and example are necessary and important, but not the whole story by any means. Actual learning happens at the interface of our imagination and our ignorance and our other thinking processes. And actual learning can encompass much more than my experiences, and even more than the experiences of others.
The third way of learning is by simulation. It's been called different names throughout history: thought experiment, mental modelling, or in one word, imagination.
Imagination, the ability of the mind to simulate reality, and to simulate potential reality, is one of the critical skills to make your life better, make your community better, and even to make the world better.
To walk in another man's moccasins
Empathy is based on simulation: if you can't imagine what it would be like to be someone else, then you can't empathize.
Better Life through Better Simulation
Better World Through Better Simulation