“When ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’: On the supposed hominid footprints of Álora.

Abstract

As the Dublin playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you pursue what you imagine and, finally, you create what you pursue.” This phrase is compatible with the process of scientific creativity, which also requires high doses of imagination. However, as with so many other things in this life, letting oneself be carried away by an excess of fantasy can be counterproductive, as illustrated by Francisco de Goya in one of his engravings from the series “Los Caprichos,” titled “The sleep of reason produces monsters”. On this work, in which the background of despair that precedes the famous black paintings of the Baroque genius can be glimpsed, Adelardo López de Ayala, a contemporary writer of the Aragonese painter, pointed out in a manuscript preserved in the National Library: “when men do not hear the cry of reason, everything becomes visions.”