‘Storythinking’, how storytelling helps the brain think

“In the 1980s, when I was a kid, reading Tolkien I began to believe that there are right actions and wrong actions. Then, continuing, I began to believe that there are good grades and bad grades. But then I read Shakespeare, Frederick Douglass, Darwin and Maya Angelou, and I began to believe in something else: in positive struggle, in creative growth and in branching lives.” Angus Fletcher, American professor and researcher known for his work in the field of literature, particularly in the fields of narrative and neuroscience, in this new book he explains in an almost literary way, what’s insideorigin of his philosophical theory and scientific which he illustrates in a detailed and in-depth manner, trying as much as possible to be clear and informative in the book ‘Storythinking – The new science of narrative thought (Editions Code, pages 184; price 21 euros).

Can thought, knowledge, intentions ignore (or at least differentiate) from logic? Since the 4th century BC when Aristotle laid the foundations of logical thought in his monumental ‘Organon’, this principle was practically never really questioned, despite the fact that in the Renaissance some empirical philosophers such as Leonardo, Galileo or William Harvey sought a different way to consciousness and knowledge.

Then it arrived Descartes with his “I think, therefore I am” and therefore the analytical philosophers whose theories laid the foundations for the future, which is our present: the rules that move computers (with their algorithms) and the so-called ‘artificial intelligence’. The monopoly of consciousness and knowledge, however, is not only of logical thought. Angus Fletcher, a graduate in neuroscience and with a doctorate in Literature from Yale, is convinced of this, and in his essay on the new science of narrative thought, ‘Storythinking’, wants to re-establish the crucial role of narrative thinking alongside logical thinking. The latter, in fact, has been for centuries the only one on the pedestal of reasoning available to human beings thanks to the strategic work of philosophers and exponents of the rhetorical art.

Fletcher, however, explains that alongside logical thinking capable of establishing the absolute truths necessary to define everything and understand the world, there is a second way of thinking and it is also rooted in our brain: the method of narration which we can define as ” experimental”. This means that to move us forward in a reflection requires a precise effort, that of the imagination because, the author claims, the brain is used to thinking in stories.

“Storythinking is our brain improvising new actions,” Fletcher writes. And to explain the concept he explains that there are three main abilities to develop the strength of one’s narrative thought that man can learn to use with instinct. First of all, “prioritize what is exceptional”: this forces us to focus on the elements that break the logical patterns. The example that the author gives is Shakespeare’s Hamlet who, in his alleged madness, gives great weight to supernatural events, forgetting or neglecting to consider everything else that belongs to the realm of reason. Equally important is “changing perspective”, that is, asking what the reader would do if he were another person. It is a much more common mechanism than we realize and lives above all in fine minds, capable of suspending judgement, of seeing and going beyond. We can practice it by reading books and looking for stories, and we should always use it to broaden our scope. Finally, here’s what makes us powerful instead of weakening: “fueling the narrative conflict” in our heads. Fuel a battle by pitting opposing forces against each other as writers do. Like any struggle it requires effort, however it is capable of giving rise to original actions. In a journey that begins with the origins of thought and philosophy and passes through exceptional minds such as Aristotle, Cicero, Bacon, Darwin, Hegel, Frege, Russell, Popper, Eccles, Einstein, etc., Fletcher argues that intelligence is nourished of stories and grows thanks to narration, but, he explains, they must be “stories that stimulate you to be increasingly curious, creative and courageous”.

This is why it comes to define Disney is “dangerous” because “massive quantities of a single narrative formula don’t make you intelligent, but rather leading the brain to consume stories outside its usual operating range”. Fletcher is a neuroscientist as well as a philosopher and knows the central nervous system well, the mechanism of transmission of impulses in the brain. And precisely the neurons, the synapses, neurotransmitters which are similar to plugs and switches (but are not) make human beings superior to artificial intelligence as regards the part of thought linked to ‘storythinking’. They allow humans to perform tasks that no machine can however powerful can accomplish. The latter, in fact, “does not know how to create scientific hypotheses. He can’t imagine novels. He doesn’t know how to invent technologies. In other words – writes the author – she does not know how to do anything that requires her to plan or process original actions”.

Furthermore, exactly that ‘storythinking’ is the basis of the modern scientific method, which in the first half of the 19th century was invented by John Herchel which is based on narrative speculation: start from observation and then advance hypotheses to verify. A method destined to supplant the Enlightenment one based on “computational inductive reasoning” (from observation and data collection we arrive at the formulation of the law) because it introduced creativity. Although, quoting Newton, the author explains that the opposition of the scientists of the time was the motto “Hypotheses non fingo” (“I do not invent hypotheses, I do not jump to conclusions”), his method was the basis of Charles’ theory Darwin who, when he wrote ‘The Origins of Species, used creativity, made hypotheses to formulate his theory of evolution through natural selection. Even if only thanks to the intervention of Karl Popper and his famous ‘falsificationism’, whereby a scientific theory must be formulated in such a way that it can be subjected to empirical tests that could refute it, the modern scientific method based on ‘storythinking’ became is definitively stated.