Four stories, a history in map form. via Lapham's Quarterly.
Since writing the previous post about how stories are an essential and innate piece of human thought, similar ideas have been coming out of the woodwork. Perhaps it has to do with another piece of brain trickery, the part of my consciousness that hides things right under my nose until something prompts me to focus on it (where did I leave my keys? Oh, they’re in my pocket.) Anyway, there were too many interesting examples of brain science that relates to innate human abilities, it was worth a separate post just to link them properly.
Here’s a fun article that seems to be a piece of evidence for why math is so difficult for most people. It’s about a small Amazonian tribe that can only count to 5. via The Guardian.
While reading a fairly interesting essay on Nabokov’s fragmentary novel that was published recently, the author has the following thing to say:
In On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (2009), I marshal the evidence that we have evolved into a storytelling species, and that the main reason we have done so is because stories improve still further the social cognition and hence the shifts in perspective that had already reached such a high level in our species. From childhood pretend play to adult fiction, we speed up the capacity of our minds to leap beyond our here and now by taking on new roles, sidling and sliding this way and that through time, space, minds, and modalities, thanks to the intense doses of social information we deal with in fiction.
While it’s fairly shameless self-promotion, it does add some fuel to the argument I made in the previous post. via The American Scholar (Brian Boyd).
And of course the NY Times wouldn’t be left out – here is an article about how English professors are turning to neuroscience to help explain why people create and digest stories in the first place. Actually, that article is a bit depressing for anyone who is interested in the humanities. It makes it seem as if English professors don’t have any reason to exist if they can’t justify their discipline with some scientific theory. How about “We write essays about old books because it is amusing.” I’m not making up the depressing bits:
At a time when university literature departments are confronting painful budget cuts, a moribund job market and pointed scrutiny about the purpose and value of an education in the humanities, the cross-pollination of English and psychology is a providing a revitalizing lift.
Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said “it’s a new moment of hope” in an era when everyone is talking about “the death of the humanities.” To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half.
What the…?! Anyway, it’s an interesting development. via NYTimes.
For some graphical beauty mixed with literary history, check out this “Evolution of Four Stories”, via Lapham’s Quarterly.
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