In his classic 1937 book Think and Grow Rich (download pdf of entire book), Napoleon Hill contrasts creative imagination with synthetic imagination:
Given that both forms of imagination might be considered creative, I have chosen the term organic imagination to stand in place of Hill’s creative imagination .SYNTHETIC IMAGINATION: Through the faculty of synthetic imagination, one may arrange old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations1. This faculty creates nothing. It merely works with the material of experience, education, and observation with which it is fed. It is the faculty used most by the inventor, with the exception of he who draws upon the creative imagination, when he cannot solve his problem through synthetic imagination.
CREATIVE IMAGINATION: Through the faculty of creative imagination, the finite mind of man has direct communication with Infinite Intelligence2. It is the faculty through which ‘hunches’ and ‘inspirations’ are received. It is by this faculty that all basic, or new ideas are handed over to man.
1. Today, this is known as combinatorial creativity.
The table below shows the relationship between the two forms of imagination and the brain’s hemispheres. There is no mention of Infinite Intelligence, which demands a certain kind of faith and not the kind I talk about elsewhere on this website.
| SYNTHETIC IMAGINATION | ORGANIC IMAGINATION |
|---|---|
| Associated with the brain’s left hemisphere and mundane world | Associated with the brain’s right hemisphere and primal world |
| Mechanical, laboured, derivative | Natural, spontaneous, inspired |
| Recalls and repurposes buried thoughts, connects disparate notions, and combines existing ideas into new ones — an approach known as combinatorial creativity | Presents bold and novel possibilities for enriching the world, together with a felt sense of how these possibilities might be brought into being |
| Elaborates an idea or group of ideas into a fleshed out concept |
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External websites
The Epistemic Value of Imagination, by Eshaan Agrawal, on The Classic Journal website
Imagination and Creativity in Organizations (pdf; 22 pages), by Neil A. Thompson, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Imagination — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This website
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