"[…] observation is not enough, and it seems to me that in science, as in the arts, there is very little worth having that does not require the exercise of intuition as well as of intelligence, the use of imagination as well as of information." (Kathleen Lonsdale, "Facts About Crystals", American Scientist Vol. 39 (4), 1951)
"There is always an analogy between nature and the imagination, and possibly poetry is merely the strange rhetoric of that parallel." (Wallace Stevens, "The Necessary Angel", 1951)
"All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination, but representatives of real things." (Max Born, "Physical Reality", Philosophical Quarterly Vol. (11), 1953)
"The creative act owes little to logic or reason. In their accounts of the circumstances under which big ideas occurred to them, mathematicians have often mentioned that the inspiration had no relation to the work they happened to be doing. Sometimes it came while they were traveling, shaving or thinking about other matters. The creative process cannot be summoned at will or even cajoled by sacrificial offering. Indeed, it seems to occur most readily when the mind is relaxed and the imagination roaming freely." (Morris Kline, Scientific American, 1955)
"Nevertheless, there are three distinct types of paradoxes which do arise in mathematics. There are contradictory and absurd propositions, which arise from fallacious reasoning. There are theorems which seem strange and incredible, but which, because they are logically unassailable, must be accepted even though they transcend intuition and imagination. The third and most important class consists of those logical paradoxes which arise in connection with the theory of aggregates, and which have resulted in a re-examination of the foundations of mathematics." (James R Newman, "The World of Mathematics" Vol. III, 1956)
"The ultimate origin of the difficulty lies in the fact (or philosophical principle) that we are compelled to use the words of common language when we wish to describe a phenomenon, not by logical or mathematical analysis, but by a picture appealing to the imagination. Common language has grown by everyday experience and can never surpass these limits. Classical physics has restricted itself to the use of concepts of this kind; by analysing visible motions it has developed two ways of representing them by elementary processes; moving particles and waves. There is no other way of giving a pictorial description of motions - we have to apply it even in the region of atomic processes, where classical physics breaks down." (Max Born, "Atomic Physics", 1957)
"In imagination there exists the perfect mystery story. Such a story presents all the essential clews, and compels us to form our own theory of the case. If we follow the plot carefully we arrive at the complete solution for ourselves just before the author’s disclosure at the end of the book. The solution itself, contrary to those of inferior mysteries, does not disappoint us; moreover, it appears at the very moment we expect it." (Leopold Infeld, "The Evolution of Physics", 1961)
"The structures of mathematics and the propositions about them are ways for the imagination to travel and the wings, or legs, or vehicles to take you where you want to go." (Scott Buchanan, "Poetry and Mathematics", 1962)
"That perfected machines may one day succeed us is, I remember, an extremely commonplace notion on Earth. It prevails not only among poets and romantics but in all classes of society. Perhaps it is because it is so widespread, born spontaneously in popular imagination, that it irritates scientific minds. Perhaps it is also for this very reason that it contains a germ of truth. Only a germ: Machines will always be machines; the most perfected robot, always a robot." (Pierre Boulle, "Planet of the Apes", 1963)
"Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience." (Northrop Frye, "The Educated Imagination", 1964)
"The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized." (Mary C Richards, "Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person", 1964)
"[…] the human reason discovers new relations between things not by deduction, but by that unpredictable blend of speculation and insight […] induction, which - like other forms of imagination - cannot be formalized." (Jacob Bronowski, "The Reach of Imagination", 1967)
"Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination." (Barbara G Harrison, [Ms. Magazine] 1973)
"Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination." (Kenneth Boulding, Toward a General Social Science, 1974)
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