On the Origin of Stories: Evolution,
Cognition, and Fiction by Brian Boyd
A Major Step Forward
A century and a half after the publication of Origin of Species,
evolutionary thinking has expanded beyond the field of biology to include
virtually all human-related subjects—anthropology, archeology,
psychology, economics, religion, morality, politics, culture, and art. Now a
distinguished scholar offers the first comprehensive account of the
evolutionary origins of art and storytelling. Brian Boyd explains why we tell
stories, how our minds are shaped to understand them, and what
difference an evolutionary understanding of human nature makes to stories
we love.
Art is a specifically human adaptation, Boyd argues. It offers tangible
advantages for human survival, and it derives from play, itself an
adaptation widespread among more intelligent animals. More particularly,
our fondness for storytelling has sharpened social cognition, encouraged
cooperation, and fostered creativity.

After considering art as adaptation, Boyd examines Homer’s Odyssey
and Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! demonstrating how an evolutionary
lens can offer new understanding and appreciation of specific works. What
triggers our emotional engagement with these works? What patterns
facilitate our responses? The need to hold an audience’s attention, Boyd
underscores, is the fundamental problem facing all storytellers. Enduring
artists arrive at solutions that appeal to cognitive universals: an insight out
of step with contemporary criticism, which obscures both the individual and
universal. Published for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th
anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, Boyd’s study embraces
a Darwinian view of human nature and art, and offers a credo for a new
humanism.
(20090523)
Personal Review: On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition,
and Fiction by Brian Boyd
This is a very important book--important in its own right, but also important
as a marker for significant change in the academic study of the humanities.
For a generation or more, the humanities have resisted the developments
which have occurred in the departments that surround them. Sociobiology,
evolutionary psychology, cognitive science--a panoply of subjects that
build upon the advanced study of Darwin, evolution and the structure and
function of the brain (now facilitated enormously by imaging instruments)
have changed the face of anthropology, biology, psychology and other
disciplines, while the humanities stood in opposition not only to aspects of
contemporary science but often to science itself.
A number of individuals have attempted to bridge these gaps, individuals
such as Lisa Zunshine and Patrick Colm Hogan. Their task has not been
easy, given the long romance between the academic humanists and the
French Nietzscheans, a romance that has involved the subscribing to
notions which are internally inconsistent, contrary to common sense and
millennia of experience and, now, definitively, contradicted by science.
Chomsky, Steven Pinker and others have played a decisive role here, but
Boyd's book, which is cognizant of all of the relevant scientific work,
emerges directly from the humanities and utilizes studies of cognition and
evolution to trace the origins of stories and storytelling.
Basically, Boyd sees art as an adaptation, one that brings advantages in
our struggle for survival and procreative success. He studies the ways in
which stories focus attention (as play does) and foster collaboration and
unity. This heightened form of play yields a heightened form of sociality,
creates `creativity', refines and extends our cognitive skills, helps us to
understand one another's thoughts, intentions and motives, see our world
from multiple perspectives, explore possibilities and not just actualities,
command attention, enjoy status and foster recriprocal altruism (among
other things).

In the course of his study, Boyd focuses on two specific texts to elucidate
and validate his method: Homer's Odyssey and Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears
a Who! These extensive analyses are searching, lucid and effective.
Most important, this is a large book. Boyd is aware that he is throwing
down a gauntlet, though we are now reaching the hour when the reign of
Theory is largely in the past and the thoroughgoing opposition to
empiricism and the doctrinaire beliefs that we cannot talk reasonably about
`human nature' and that everything is culturally constructed (to give two
examples) are increasingly seen as untenable and even quaint. In a jacket
blurb, David Bordwell compares Boyd's work with Frye's Anatomy of
Criticism, because of its imaginative sweep and analytical precision.
Basically, Frye was trying to bring `system' to literary study. Boyd is as
well, but Boyd's `system' is closer to `science' and it is validated by the
work of thousands of individuals in science and social science
departments. Frye's myth/ritual/Jung-inspired program did not enjoy the
foundational strengths of Boyd's and it was often loosely taxonomic rather
than truly systematic.
Most interesting, I believe, is the fact that Boyd's position validates
thousands of years of humanistic thought, from Aristotle to Horace, Sidney,
Johnson, the Kant of the Critique of Pure Reason (though not perhaps the
Kant of the Critique of Judgment) and the successful practice of the
storyteller's art by a host of writers whose work has been not only
substantive but widely popular. In short, Boyd's study of human nature,
human behavior, human development and human artistic expression
squares with what many of us have long believed and it does so through
the leverage of contemporary, cutting edge science.
That does not mean that it is beyond question or dispute, for much of this
contemporary science remains inchoate and our understanding of the
human brain remains limited and partial and not all will draw the same
conclusions as a Boyd or Pinker, e.g., with regard to religion, but the
bottom line is that this work restores much of what we have lost in literary
studies and it does so with intelligence, authority and great promise for the
future.
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