There are inevitable biological reasonings behind our attachment to storytelling and our imagination in general. Digging in human being perspective needs explanations of a scientist to a non-scientist like me which can be unraveling the truth. One of these scientists is E. O. Wilson that I have come across and I suggest you to read his books or research about him.
Storytelling as creation of imagination has value in the realm of science, as Wilson says scientists and poets think alike. creative people in the humanities and the arts think alike at the beginning, he adds.
The phrase I like the best is, ‘The ideal scientist thinks like a poet, writes like a bookkeeper. But he’s still a poet inside.’ Wilson says in the earliest stages of creative thought, even scientists engage in “poetic excursions,” or fantasy. He puts it in this way that if you are really a creative scientist you engage with a lot of fantasies. I guess because they ask ‘what if’ statement in many cases and not only that, according to him;
“You say, ‘A appears to be somehow connected with B. Let me think up even fantastical connections that might be there, and then I’ll go looking for them, and it’s free-ranging, it’s sloppy, it’s very human. After they come up with these fantastical connections, scientists take the next step and get out their notebooks.”
“It has to be replicable and it has to be testable, it has to be done with statistical evaluation of the soundness of the result,” he adds.
This is the point, Wilson says, where some potential scientists are discouraged.
He explains that, the average person who’s fully intelligent and could know a lot about science, at this point throws up their hands and says, ‘Science is not for me! It’s just too difficult’ even though it isn’t, at least, he states It’s kind of like poetry. Scientists think like every other person, while “The best scientists think like the best poets,” Wilson implies.
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