Science Requires Imagination

It is surprising that people do not believe that there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.

And it requires even greater imagination than art because you must imagine something that has never been imagined before and imagine it within the rules of all that has come before it.