The modern society and the advanced human civilization is not built up by only imagination or merely konwledge. In fact, without even one of them, we could not have the life we are living now. These two elements are the initial parts of the development of our society, technology, science, art, and so on.
There might be a group of people who advocate the outweighted importance of imagination, take the examples that without people's imagination about the outer space and the undersea world, we would not have the spacecraft and submarine. However, if we look into the developmental history and process, it would not be hard for us to find that without the discover of dynamic principle, buoyant effect and the pressure theory, we could not even build up a ship or a kite, not to mention those complicated, and highly advanced scientific technological craft. Therefore, it is safe to say that knowledge is the foundation of imagination.
Or, other people might emphasize the significant effect of knowlege and understate the role of imagination in the progress of human civilization. Knowledge, as mentioned above, plays an considerable role on this stage. Nevertheless, without imagination, knowledge would not have come so far. One of the telling example is the invention of airplane. If it is not for the imagination of flying like a bird in the sky, how could those scientists gather their knowledge, try their best, do the experiments again and again, and finally born the new knowledge of the aircraft theory, which resulted to the Whites' first airplane? Another example is about the human mind. If thousands of years ago, those greatest minds like Freud, have not spend their times on the imagination of human soul and human mind, how could psychology as a subject be founded and how could those later-comers look into the human mind and try to find the truth? How could psychology be a independent modern science and make such a contribution to the development of not only individuals but to our society as a whole? In a word, imagination is the pilot and motivation of knowledge.
Just as I stated in the first paragraph, imagination and knowledge are both indispensible. The architecture called human civilization requires both the knowledge of construction and the artistic imagination, only by which would build up a secure, and at the same time fabulous erection. It would be irrational and unreasonable for us to compare the importance of them.
Consequently, what we should do is not comparing, but exploring the world with the purpose of finding the perfect combination of knowledge and imagination in those professional and academic fields. Only by this way could we make full use of our solid knowledge and fantastic imagination to stimulate the development of our human civilization.