文章出自GRE黑皮书，王耕伟老师原创，侵删。
In regard to the magic code to success in professions and academic fields, the statement assigns more significance to imagination rather than knowledge and expertise. However, I tend to argue that in most circumstances, imagination and knowledge are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but more complementary to each other; therefore, it is of greater importance to strike a favorable balance between imagination and knowledge rather than to weigh their value and give up either of them. The fields of literature, art and science, sufficiently support my claim.
In the world of literature, professional knowledge serves as the cornerstone of the credibility of works while free imagination contributes to polishing the story and refining the plot. Should there be no professional knowledge or expertise supporting the details, the whole work would be no more than a flamboyant corpse deprived of the fundamental validity of stories. On the other hand, the lack of imagination within the stories would only lead to reader’s loss of appetite to go on with the books. To have a brief scan of the previous literature world, all of the masterpieces benefit from a successful marriage of unfettered imagination and reliable knowledge. In “Anna Karenina”, Leo Tolstoy successfully created a classical character Anna, whose legendary life is replete with reflections of the nineteenth century of Russia. These reflections are trustworthy because they are based on the author’s authentic and vast knowledge of that period of time. In addition, what renders the character so distinguishable from other characters is the writer’s unrestrained imagination. It is not difficult to imagine how less sparkling this work would be if the writer had been less knowledgeable and had poorer imagination.
While in the field of art, the combination of imagination and knowledge appears even closer. Artists temper their professional knowledge and skills by learning from the previous masters; however, in order to make innovative achievements, they unavoidable tend to break the chains of tradition and stimulate their imagination by all possible means. For example, from the prestigious work Lat Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the greatest painters in the Renaissance period, we can observe the painter’s insightful understanding and professional knowledge of the mid-century European religions. However, it was not until the birth of one of his another works Mona Lisa, which is not only a great reflection of the artist’s imagination, but also stirs the reviewer’s illusions, did he reach his peak in the field of art. Likewise, another well-known artist Monet also owes his success as an important impressionist to his vast knowledge about the shadowing of objects under light, as well as to his unfettered imagination of the relocation of all the objects on the same piece of paper.
Even the universe of science, which is famous for its rigorous demonstration and scrupulous observation, also derives substantial benefit from the cooperation of knowledge and imagination. It is imagination inspires scientists to explore the unknown world, and it is the professional knowledge that enables them to pave the way to such an unknown world. History has witnessed countless examples: the invention of the microwave oven, the first use of radar, the creation of dolphin-like ships, all of which would still be in the vacuum without their inventors’ fertile imagination, as well as the experts’ knowledge and gallant endeavor.
Conversely, someone might oppose to my argument, drawing attention to the frustrating fact that nowadays people sometimes rely too much on the existing resources of information and knowledge, such as Internet, books, libraries, but are reluctant to think for themselves. Admittedly, students who overpay their attention to knowledge but cease to brainstorm would become nerds; scholars who overlook the importance of imagination would end up mediocre; society that only relies on existing knowledge would come to an overall standstill. Nevertheless, it is exactly the contribution of such discouraging facts that convince us of the necessity of combining imagination and knowledge and employing them to help us go further on the road to the mysterious world.
To briefly sum up, while imagination and knowledge might play different roles in our life and career, it behooves us to regard them as inseparable and interdependent factors. Only equipped with both imagination and knowledge, are we able to walk faster and further.