The realms of possibility

Everything that is imaginable is possible, but not everything that is possible is imaginable. That puts humankind in a bit of a dilemma. We are limited to our own imaginations, and any invention that is ground breaking or transformative often transgresses the boundaries of conventional thinking.

Many of the great ideas across history were dreamt of by mavericks, people who were considered to be a little unconventional, or simply downright strange. And yet such people brought us an understanding that the earth orbits the sun, time is relative, computers can do more for us than mere calculations, and much more. At the time they may be despised or ignored, but later when the idea emerges as extremely useful, they are revered. Such creativity of imagination produces the big inventions and revelations of our age. It is disruptive and it changes our thinking for ever. Various psychologists such as Csikszentmihalyi, Boden and Dweck refer to this as 'big C creativity.' It often relies on people taking great risks, trying something new, or adapting old ideas in radically new ways.

Voltaire said that we are all creatures of the world in which we inhabit, and that few can raise themselves above the ideas of their time. We are limited by what we know and experience now. We gaze down a very narrow corridor of existence. It takes a creative mind, drawing on big C creativity to dream up new and disruptive ideas that will affect society deeply. It takes thinking of a new kind to become a Galileo, Einstein or Lovelace. It takes someone who is prepared to risk their reputation, learn through their failures and forge their successes by doing the hard miles. How many educators are prepared to make that level of commitment?

Photo by Mehdinom on Wikimedia Commons


The realms of possibility by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.