[Japo]

Imagination never creates anything out of the blue. I think it was Aristotle who stated that phantasia processes the data from the senses. I remember a very good ducumentary that kinda proved that the brain works much alike when dreaming and when awake. Only that when sleeping there's no data from the senses, but the brain doesn't stop working and so makes stuff up, but still ultimately out of the stored memories. When you're awake your brain also makes stuff up from stored memories all the time, that's why you see someone and think, "hey that's my friend X", and then you look closer and see that you made a mistake; or you think you saw a revolting insect and then it turns out to be some polen. Without imagination we would only see meaningless "bitmaps".