The Creative Imagination

Just completed the essay by philosophy Michael Polanyi "The Creative Imagination." Polanyi is a philosopher who worked a lot in the realm of epistemology, or what we mean when we say we know something. His work focuses especially on things like intuition and tacit knowledge, the way we can know something without knowing exactly how to put words to it. Isn't it curious how we can know something before we are conscious of it, like when we know something "feels off," and then we discover later why it felt off? I am endlessly fascinated by this reality.This particular essay integrates aspects of what it means to know something, but focuses primarily on how the imagination plays a crucial part in keeping us motivated as we intuitively pursue a solution to a problem or resolve to a challenge. For example, learning how to ride a bike, all the way to something like Einstein working out his theory of relativity.When we first have an intuitive sense that we can achieve some imagined outcome, we…

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