[FRIAM] Narrating Complexity

[Steven A Smith]

      Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences

Susan Stepney is "a friend of FriAM", currently professor at U. York but
formerly research scientist at Logica, UK nominally a competitor to Bios
Group back in the day.   She has visited here several times over the
past two decades.  Some of you may have met her and her team(s) when
they visited.

She and Richard Walsh have a new book coming out on /Narrating Complexity/

*Narrating Complexity*

    This book stages a dialogue between international researchers from
    the broad fields of complexity science and narrative studies. It
    presents an edited collection of chapters on aspects of: how
    narrative theory from the humanities may be exploited to understand,
    explain, describe, and communicate aspects of complex systems, such
    as their emergent properties, feedbacks, and downwards causation;
    and how ideas from complexity science can inform narrative theory,
    and help explain, understand, and construct new, more complex models
    of narrative as a cognitive faculty and as a pervasive cultural form
    in new and old media.

    The book is suitable for academics, practitioners and professionals,
    and postgraduates in complex systems, narrative theory, literary and
    film studies, new media and game studies, and science communication.

http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319647128

Background to this work includes:

http://susan-stepney.blogspot.com/2017/08/book-review-narrative-theory-and.html

    Labels: books
    <http://susan-stepney.blogspot.com/search/label/books>, cognition
    <http://susan-stepney.blogspot.com/search/label/cognition>, review
    <http://susan-stepney.blogspot.com/search/label/review>

    David Herman, ed.
    /Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences/.
    CSLI. 2003

Some notable excerpts from Susan's review as well as from the book:

Stepney:

    /The problem is this. We understand the world through narrative
    (allegedly). Complex systems are unnarratable (so it seems).
    Therefore, we literally cannot understand complex systems. /

Abbot:

    /We understand the world through explanatory narratives of entities
    with agency. Parts of the world that do not have suitable structure
    are unnarratable, and hence are not easily understood. Evolution is
    one such process.
    /

Herman

    /Narrative can have many cognitive functions. It is a system for
    structuring patterns of events progressing through time: for
    structuring processes. It can be used to “chunk” experiences into
    “frames” of stereotypical experiences, then used to compare this
    typical against the actual. This helps us to understand the world
    more, and therefore have to memorise less. It allows us to generate
    and evaluate what-if scenarios. It allows us to draw coherent system
    boundaries: to extract and bound a relevant collection of
    participants, events, and structures from the overall stream of
    events we experience. /


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