The Storytelling Animal

Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington & Jefferson College and is one of the leading figures in the movement toward a more scientific humanities. The author or editor of five scholarly books, Gottschall’s work has been prominently featured in The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Steven Pinker has called him "a brilliant young scholar" whose writing is "unfailingly clear, witty, and exciting."

出版者:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

作者:Jonathan Gottschall

页数:272

出版时间:2012-4-10

价格:GBP 15.03

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780547391403

图书标签:Storytelling人性讲故事进化心理学美国文学人文闲书英文版

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe: we spin fantasies, we devour novels, films, and plays, and even our sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories are a way of rehearsing life’s complex social problems.Our penchant for story has evolved, like other behaviors, to enhance our survival, and, crucially, that of our social group. (In fact, studies show that people who read fiction are more empathetic.) Gottschall explores the deep pattern in children’s make-believe, and what that reveals about story’s prehistoric origins. He shows how a story was partly responsible for Hitler’s rise, how schizophrenia is an example of the story mind run amok, and how successful fiction is inherently moral. We are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

读后感

年纪大了，看书总会带着自己预设的套路。如果作者没有按套路走，多少会有些诧异。本以为本书是科普向的，介绍的是与故事和叙事性相关的认知科学以及古人类学研究成果，不过却总读不到预想中的硬货。于是往前翻到作者简介，才赫然发现作者是英文系的教授。也不是说英文系就写不...  

作者Jonathan开篇谈到infinite monkey theorem，谈到Amy Plowman做实验给猴子计算机来做实验，然后发现猴子只会搞破坏，说“show that the infinite monkey theory is flawed”。我从未见过如此愚蠢的zoologist，原定理只是用于表达随机性在无限时间下的威力，这个Amy竟然从字...  

前言 说故事、听故事不只是休闲娱乐 统计学家都同意，只要能够抓到一群长生不老的猴子，把牠们跟打字机关在一起， 任牠们不断狂敲键盘，经过很长很长一段时间之后，这些猴子终会誊写出一本完美的《哈姆雷特》副本，每一个句号、逗点、“誓言”几乎都会落在正确的位置上。不过，...  

用户评价

感觉没有预想的这么好

这个主题非常感兴趣。。。这个主题的书非常少，这是其中一本，也有收获，不过没有从根本上解决我们的疑问。

beauty instinct , spent 的续集

阅读此书，帮助你了解人为什么要讲故事

Pale fire