Einstein has a famous saying: Imagination is more important than knowledge. ?The imagination that Einstein talked about is not as wild and wild as writing online novels. What this imagination is can be gleaned from another of his famous sayings. Another of his famous sayings is: Raising a question is often more important than solving a problem. Because solving a problem often only requires a mathematical or experimental technique, while raising new questions requires creative imagination, which marks the real progress of science. ?
Einstein was a scientist who respected imagination. When he studied physical problems, he often created a physical scenario and used "thought experiments" to profoundly explain the problem. Einstein's main contribution to science was the discovery of special relativity and general relativity. In addition, he was also one of the founders of quantum mechanics. His debate with Bohr on quantum mechanics promoted the development of quantum mechanics.
In the era when Einstein lived, due to limited experimental conditions, it was difficult to directly explain some laws of relativity and quantum mechanics through experiments. The thought experiments created by Einstein's imagination played a great role. In addition, Einstein was also a direct beneficiary of imagination. Many of his theories started from his imagination, and were finally derived from the known facts of motion coupled with mathematical analysis and reasoning. For example, in the theory of general relativity, Einstein imagined that a person would be in free fall and analyzed that the person would not feel gravity. On this basis, Einstein analyzed that a gravitational field and an acceleration are equivalent, and then further established the general theory of relativity.
After the great success of Maxwell's equations, humans realized that light is an electromagnetic wave. In order to explain the photoelectric effect, Einstein proposed the wave-particle duality of light. He believed that light has both particle and wave properties. He successfully explained the photoelectric effect and won the Nobel Prize for it. Later, de Broglie boldly imagined that particles such as electrons and protons also have wave properties. De Broglie's bold idea made many scientists afraid to accept it, but Einstein had a discerning eye and gave him support. Later, the wave nature of matter was experimentally confirmed, and de Broglie's concept of matter waves laid a solid foundation for the establishment of quantum mechanics.
Having so much personal experience, Einstein naturally believed that imagination is more important than knowledge.