Human creativity, whether exemplified as invention or innovation, is essentially about new ideas and has to do in large part with thinking.<\/p>\n
What many Muslims of today have been unaware of but which a number of past Muslim scholars such as ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali had elaborated on is the close relation that exists between thinking as a peculiarly human faculty and imagination as the most refined faculty possessed by animals of which man is biologically a species.<\/p>\n
To the aforementioned scholars, acts of human imaginative faculty (al-quwwah al-mutakhayyilah<\/em>) are mainly of three types.<\/p>\n The first type consists of its associating (or composition) as well as dissociating (or decomposition) of various particular images and meanings that are already in one\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n One is thereby able to \u201ccreate\u201d numerous imaginary objects and events such as unicorn, fictions and fairy tales, and their likes.<\/p>\n Its second type of acts comprises resembling and likening, resulting then in various kinds of symbolism.<\/p>\n Hence, when one\u2019s intelligence divides something into branches, one\u2019s imagination likens such a portioning to the branches of a tree, or when something is ordered in different degrees, one\u2019s imagination likens such a hierarchy to a ladderlike structure.<\/p>\n The third type of acts pertains to its mediacy in human recollection such that something which one has forgotten becomes recollected.<\/p>\n Such is the case because one\u2019s imagination, being by nature active, keeps scrutinizing the many images (or forms) preserved in one\u2019s memory, moving from one form to another one nearest to the former, until it comes across that form by means of which one\u2019s mind comes to remember a forgotten meaning.<\/p>\n The relation of that form to the arrival of the meaning which is associated with it is like the relation, as discussed in formal logic, of the middle term of a syllogism to its conclusion; for through its presence, one is prepared to receive the conclusion.<\/p>\n In fact, the aforementioned is precisely what mnemonics and mind-mapping as refined memorization techniques and devices have capitalized on.<\/p>\n Yet, one may still wonder, how does imagination relate to thinking?<\/p>\n Thinking,\u00a0as we had explained on several occasions before, was considered by such scholars to be \u201cthe mental act of (1) arranging into correct and meaningful order (2) what one has already known in order to (3) attain what one is still ignorant of.\u201d<\/p>\n It is clear that there are three central and constitutive elements embedded in such a perspective.<\/p>\n One such constituent, indicated by (1) above, obviously relates to the way one mentally organizes those units of knowledge which one is currently attending to, resulting thus in certain patterns or arrangements in one\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n It is the manner one relates one unit with another unit, or a group of other units of knowledge, in order to prepare one\u2019s mind to be inspired with new units of knowledge.<\/p>\n It concerns the numerous active compositions (or associations) as well as decompositions (or dissociations) of such units in one\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n This constituent of thinking is hence considered to be the \u201cform,\u201d or \u201cstructure,\u201d of thinking, which is actually the dimension of thinking that\u00a0formal\u00a0<\/em>logic as a discipline of study is singularly concerned with.<\/p>\n In fact, it is in this structure-forming act of the mind that one easily finds the defining role of human imagination.<\/p>\n So instrumental is imagination to thinking that it has also been termed \u201ccogitative faculty\u201d (al-quwwah al-mutafakkirah<\/em>, or\u00a0al-quwwah al-mufakkirah<\/em>).<\/p>\n In other words, cogitation as a mental act is carried out with the assistance of the imagination, in the course of intuiting more composite and higher cognitions and intelligibles.<\/p>\n In this particular performance of the intellect, the imagination is used to acquire the middle term of a syllogism by means of its associating and dissociating of the units of knowledge one has already had.<\/p>\n The intellect, by God\u2019s leave, will then intuit the conclusion of such a syllogistic composition.<\/p>\n This logico-intellectual operation of the human mind actually multiplies as one progresses in knowledge.<\/p>\n As such, and given the prevalent tendency among today\u2019s pundits of creativity to assign imagination a pivotal role in invention and innovation, that there be close connection between imagination and thinking as recognized by such Muslim luminaries of the past and as herein outlined is particularly significant.<\/p>\n \n \n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Human creativity, whether exemplified as invention or innovation, is essentially about new ideas and has to do in large part with thinking. What many Muslims of today have been unaware of but which a number of past Muslim scholars such as ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali had elaborated on is the close relation that exists between…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_wpzoom_pinterest_image_url":"","_wpzoom_pinterest_hidden_image":"0","_wpzoom_pinterest_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-star","category-220","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}