23: Synthetic imagination vs pure imagining

Newcreators deploy either synthetic imagination or pure imagining as befits the situation.

In his classic 1937 book Think and Grow Rich (download pdf of entire book), Napoleon Hill contrasts synthetic imagination with 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.
2. Infinite Intelligence is also known as spirit, source, intent and the Tao, and by various other names (read more about Infinite Intelligence and the synonyms). But the name is irrelevant: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” – Tao Te Ching.

In place of creative imagination I have adopted the term pure imagining for the following reasons:

Both forms of imagination could be considered creative.
The contrast with synthetic imagination is stronger.
Imagination is an abstract noun, a no-thing, whereas imagining is a verb, an activity.
Pure imagining signifies a co-creative partnership with intent (aka Infinite Intelligence, Creative Action etc. — view list of synonyms and related terms).

Synthetic imagination

“Use your imagination.”

When tuned into mundane world, people regard imagination as a tool to be used.

In the workplace, ideas are produced by means of codified idea generation methods, commonly a version of Osborn-style brainstorming using Post-it Notes.

Participants in a choreographed brainstorming session recall and repurpose buried thoughts, connect disparate notions and combine existing ideas into new ones — a process known as combinatorial creativity.

The facilitator will sometimes introduce SCAMPER or another tool to stimulate the production of a wider range of suggestions.

Read the article: Why I reject brainstorming

Producing ideas in this way is mechanical and labour intensive, and the ideas produced are likely to be mediocre and derivative.

When engaged in a now-to-new (innovation, change or problem solving) project, synthetic imagination can be employed expediently to elaborate a potent but rudimentary idea brought forth by pure imagining.

Read about the Idea-to-Concept Method elsewhere on this website

Pure imagining

‘Pure imagining’ refers to a mental state of creative or imaginative thought that is separate from sensory experience and belief. It can be understood in several ways: as a cognitive process that is not grounded in present reality or sensory input as it is when a person mentally constructs a new idea; as a state of pure, unfettered creativity; or as a spiritual or philosophical concept that equates a person’s imagination with a divine source of creation.

Excerpted from a ChatGPT summary

Pure imagining is a verb, referring to an activity in which the newcreater forms a co-creative partnership with intent.

We can learn to link with a stream of Creative Action so fully that it seems that all we think and do originates from within ourselves, rather than from the eternal realm. This degree of rapport and unification with Creative Action is exhilarating and deeply satisfying.

Edward Matchett, industrial design teacher and Creative Action author

Pure imagining is a natural, uncontrived activity yielding a value generation possibility and a glimpse of how it might be actualised. The embryonic idea will subsequently be developed into a fleshed out concept that can be shared with others, further developed, and assesed for desirability, feasibility and viability.

Possibilities are imagined in the present tense, with the newcreator seeing a parallel reality in which value is being generated for a particular piece of the world in a particular way — right here, right now.