Imagination

Just finished Sphere by Micheal Crichton. Micheal states that animals such as bear, chimpanzee, dolphins etc are quite intelligent animals, comparable to 6-10 year old human. Some of these animals also have a few special abilities such as language, caring for the young, social structure, etc. Yet these animals never evolved to a higher intelligence through evolution. What make humans special?

What make humans special is imagination. Animals cannot make mental images of how reality might be. It cannot envision what humans call the past and the future. Nothing else, not human's ape—nature, not tool-using nature, not language, not violence or caring for young or social groupings. All these things can be found in other animals. Human's greatness lies in imagination.The ability to imagine is the largest part of what is called intelligence.

You'd think imagination is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen. This is the gift of humans and this is the danger, because we do not choose to control our imaginings. Humans imagine wonderful things and imagine terrible things, and then take no responsibility for the choice. Humans say they have inside them both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth they have just one thing inside them—the ability to imagine.

Quite thought provoking.