Why do scientists need imagination

And can creativity be taught? But I would argue that artists do the same thing. Jung, who has written a number of articles about the neuroscience of creativity, noted that the stage between incubation and illumination involves a pretty big cognitive handoff.

But the cognitive control network takes over once your brain wants to articulate and implement the idea. Jung is most interested in that tenuous transfer between the two systems, when an idea evolves from something abstract to something it can articulate and evaluate. Neurologically, the creative process should look the same regardless of whether a person is an artist or a scientist, Jung says.

And researchers have just begun to see this creativity in real time. Limb did similar study with rap artists, asking them to improvise on the fly. What is most of the Universe made of? Are the laws of physics ultimately unified? What was the Big Bang like? You just say them and they have such grandeur. The more you learn about the equations, the more you learn about physics, the more you learn how beautiful it is.

Any experiment or measurement that does not go as planned is not a failure; that experiment is an opportunity to learn why it turned out the way it did. Here at Polymer Solutions, innovation comes when we are at our most curious. Without curiosity, we might be tempted to just accept things on a surface level and never dig deeper. Skip to content. To conduct experiments or study a subject, a scientist observes what is happening.

Clear observation requires a mind not clouded by preconceived ideas. Once a scientist has made a judgment, she shuts down the observation process, which keeps her mind closed to discovery. The good scientist clears her mind and suspends her judgment. By suspending her judgment and opening her mind, she is free to see the patterns that might emerge or to gain new knowledge. A scientist with an open mind is free to follow the flow of creative insight.

Scientists use thinking processes that require the ability to think in uncommon ways. An open mind allows the scientist to make breakthroughs and discover new worlds.

Innovation starts with a mind willing to suspend disbelief and to think things not previously thought.