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Conceptual analysis reveals how reframing past knowledge drives innovation across art and science, indicating that original discovery fundamentally relies on reinterpreting existing ideas.
Many groundbreaking works in art and science owe their origins to the creative spark ignited by reimagination—the process whereby artists and scientists reinterpret and reframe past and existing knowledge, envisioning it in a new context that reveals new possibilities. Artistic and scientific innovation originating from reimagination brings to mind William Faulkner’s famous line, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” [W. Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun ( 1 )].
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Joseph L. Goldstein (2026) studied this question.
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