Angus Fletcher

Ever since the ancient Greek philosophers, western thought has been focused on logic. Everything, it is claimed, can be understood as operations of and, or, or not. It has gotten mankind quite far, but it has limited both progress and creativity. Biologist Angus Fletcher is here to straighten that out and restore the high office of the narrative, in his latest book, Storythinking. It is a most unusual book, plumbing the depths of history to find where philosophy went off the rails, examining neurobiology for insight into creativity, and festooned with stories about great characters all the way through. I can honestly report I’ve never read anything like it. And that’s a good thing.

Biologically, Man is keyed to sight and action. Forcing the brain to assign logical explanations for everything he sees and does has taken tens of thousands of years, and has not proven a thorough answer to much of anything, Fletcher says. If Man could return to his natural self, the result could be a whole new universe of thought and creativity. Instead, we today believe that intelligence itself derives from logic, an empty concept by comparison to what could be. No wonder we think every story has already been told.

He discovered that story wasn’t just for telling, as we have been led to believe. Story was for thinking. It was a way of life, learning, and projecting.

This is not a new discovery. Fletcher found that “MBAs at Harvard University, the globe’s most successfully self-promotional business school, are scrupulously instructed: ‘Telling a story has proven to be a superior way of communicating information, because people process stories differently than they do non-narrative information, such as a simple recitation of facts.’” He says the problem with logic is that it seeks an ideal product, while storythinking seeks an ideal process. Product is a thing; process is becoming. Early literature: Greek, Roman, English – was all about becoming – a hero, a champion, a survivor, a god . A product is dead by comparison.

This sort of logic-seeking, tortured interpretation is not a happy place. Fletcher points out we have a habit of “abstracting practice into the theory of practice.” In an endless attempt to simplify, we overthink to force ourselves into the new box. Where we can never be happy with the results. Because it represents no truth at all. Storythinking, on the other hand leverages “our personal, physical, emotional and intellectual growth. (It is) accelerated by empowering the storythinking of the people around us.” Far from obsolete or redundant, this is Network Effect in action. The more people have at it, the more valuable it becomes to all.

This hammering a square peg into a round hole has lots of unintended side effects, too. For one thing, it demolishes the joys of literature: “By converting literature into language and then interpreting language with semiotics, America’s futuristic curriculum was flattening four-dimensional narratives into two-dimensional propositions that reduced characters to representations and plots to arguments. Behaviors became themes, happenings became meanings, and actions became allegories, expunging much of the psychological activity that Shakespeare and the rest of our global library had been crafted to generate.” Is it any wonder kids won’t read?

Fletcher has his own rules and framework to grow creativity, much more accommodating to the way people are built: Prioritize the exceptional, shift the perspective, and stoke narrative conflict. Out of those parameters, he thinks, far more creative outcomes are possible.

He says there are four elements to story: characters, storyworlds (environments with their own distinct laws as to what can and cannot happen), plots (sequences of action), and narrators (“their why shapes how it is told”). This is certainly not what they taught in my schools.

Logic and metaphysics are simply not equipped for “solving ethical or biological problems such as personal and social growth.” And yet that is what most of the world’s greatest literature is all about. “Logic un-narratives narrative, creating fables with morals, myths with archetypes, heavens with commandments, stories with symbols, media with representations, and other timeless interpretations that evaporate storytelling’s core function: the innovation of action.” Today, you couldn’t sell a book without those qualities evident, cutting off potentially groundbreaking stories at the knees. And finally, logic is artificial, while storythinking is “part of life, and the law of life is growth through variety.” For Fletcher, we have strayed – far.

Having made his points, Fletcher cinches it with: “What our brain’s dual mechanisms thus reveal is that narrative and logic are complementary tools. There’s no way to replace storythinking with deduction or interpretation, any more than there’s a way to replace a hammer with a saw.”

There is a lot on artificial intelligence (AI) in Storythinking, as it seems in most books I’m reading these days. For Fletcher, AI will never overtake human ingenuity, because it simply processes words looking for patterns, on request. He says “Limited data is the province of the narrative, and narrative is the province of our brain’s synaptic machinery.” Human intelligence has a “main source: the plan-generating, hypothesis-imagining, action-inventing neural processes of storythinking.” I’m not at all sure that is correct, as AI seems capable of imitating writers, writing stories in their styles, and in general, being all but indistinguishable from them. And I’m really not sure what would happen if someone tasked AI with outside-the-box thinking.

Notable by its absence in Storythinking is the word reduction. Reductionism has been the logical endpoint of numerous disasters, such as healthcare, for example. Doctors routinely fail to listen, claiming to have reduced the symptoms to a clear and simple diagnosis without further investigation. This goes on in politics, and even in the sciences like physics, where Einstein spent the last half of his life trying to reduce the entire universe in to neat and simple geometric shapes. Yet somehow, Fletcher doesn’t focus on it.

Similarly, he does not venture in mind-expansion through things like psychedelics, which countless creatives employ to break out of the stifling mold of logic and reductionism. Because for all the marvelous connections neurons make to bolster human thinking, there are infinitely more possible connections when not forbidden by logic, efficiency and deduction.

The book ends with an absolutely jampacked Q&A of Fletcher with himself. It is a rapidfire summary answering most of the questions readers might have, imparting at least as much information as the rest of the book. It is a most unusual conclusion to a book, and is worth the price of admission by itself. I guess one should expect no less from someone professing storythinking.

David Wineberg… (más)

Storythinking: The New Science of Narrative Intelligence by Angus Fletcher is a wonderful short read that delivers a big message: story is as important to human knowledge and progress as logic.

Not surprisingly, the most engaging parts of the book are where Fletcher is offering a narrative rather than listing facts or making a "logical" argument. And together, as in all of human thought, the storytelling and the logic come together in a narrative. Go figure.

No doubt some people will find little points to critique rather than take in and assess the larger argument. These are likely people who lean heavily toward logic at the expense of story. They must be great fun at get-togethers. Does Fletcher take some liberty in his storytelling? Probably so, but not to the point of being unreliable, more as someone who uses mind-pictures that help make the points of the story more memorable. Surprise, the wolf didn't actually pretend to be grandma, just in case that small point kept you from getting the point of the fable.

If you sometimes find yourself bogged down in the "just the facts" deadends many of our public and academic debates take us, read this and try using story in your talks. It is surprisingly easy since we do it naturally, well, until it is driven out of us by our "education." Much like our imagination.

Highly recommended for those wanting to understand the value of storythinking, the idea that thinking in "what ifs" is both fun and productive. Not in isolation from logical thought, but alongside.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (más)

This book is about how literature has evolved over the course of centuries and why it can be valuable to our overall mental health. Visual media can also have a similar impact. There are many different messages and techniques that have been used to teach us life lessons. By reading fictional stories about people we can actually learn new ways to cope with the problems and struggles in our lives and bolster our mental health. This book is really hard to describe but it gave me a new perspective on books, movies and television.… (más)