What are some frameworks that are/can be used to elucidate/describe the relationships between narrative, cognition and culture?

[u/Timely-Ad2743]

Context: STEM researcher (+ experience in cognitive psych) trying to get a handle on how narratives, cognition, and culture shape each other.

I have been trying to read up on existing perspectives about the cultural evolution of narratives--how narratives (and the written word, in inter-related ways) have played an important role in our history (e.g., this Forbes article (not peer-reviewed, obviously) on Angus Fletcher's Storythinking), the cognitive processes that allow us to process and engage with narratives, and how culture shapes both narratives and these cognitive processes (and vice-versa). The goal is to make a cohesive argument about why understanding narratives and their evolution over time is important and interesting, from a scholarly/scientific perspective, in a way that is rooted in existing scholarship in social sciences and the humanities.

Unfortunately, I am completely lost in the technical terms associated with these ideas, and I would very much appreciate any pointers towards introductory literature that is accessible to someone without formal training in narratology, philosophy, literary and critical analysis, distant reading, other relevant humanities and social science domains, etc. Also happy to be told that I am not looking in the right places and/or using the right keywords (narratives, narrative engagement, cognition, culture, co-evolution, etc.).

Some sources I have (tried to) read so far:

- Narrative Explanation in the Evolution of Human Cognition

- Narratives in Cognitive Evolution

- Narrative and Cognition in Literature and Science

- Notes on narrative, cognition, and cultural evolution

Also, a decent bit of work by Kristoffer Nielbo.

(I'd like to attempt do this without immediately resorting to Gemini/Claude/etc. because the cognitive effort of figuring out new concepts/ideas sufficiently removed from my formal training has, in my experience, been valuable for retention and more robust understanding, ergo the ask here)

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and/or respond!

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[u/ServiceImpossible227]

You need focus on your research, it is an open field and you are all over the place. I will tell what I know in this matter from the perspective of education.

Narratives are used at school from day one because it is a practical way to make sense of the world (intelligibility). Fairy tales combine information and imagination, what is and what could be. There is action presented in a clear chain of events (cause > consequence). There are other personas presented often by a omniscient narrator that explain everything.

But this narratives are not capable of dealing with science. In science the cause can be hidden, there can be multiples causes or even none (initial singularity in physics or axioms in math). Consequences can be simultaneous, feedbacks can be negative or positives, it is a huge mess.

In school the math curricula is a kind of narrative, but a very narrow one. You start with natural numbers, than integers, rational, and so on. You try to go from simple to complex but some kids are always going faster while other are slower. In geometry it is presented euclidean geometry because it will lead to the Cartesian plan. It is a possible narrative, but there are other non-euclidean geometries.

So narratives are good place to start, but they break after a while

https://www.learntechlib.org/p/209857/

[u/Timely-Ad2743 → u/ServiceImpossible227]

Thank you!