Two Ways to Understand the World

The psychologist Jerome Bruner has argued that human beings understand the world in two very different ways. The first he calls the “paradigmatic mode” of thought. In the paradigmatic mode, we seek to comprehend our experience in terms of tightly reasoned analyses, logical proof, and empirical observation. In the second, “narrative mode” of thought, we are concerned with human wants, needs and goals. This is the mode of stories, wherein we deal with “the vicissitudes of human intention” organized in time. 

Masters of the Heritage Matic mode try to “say no more than they mean.” Examples are scientists or logicians seeking to determine cause-and-effect relationships in order to explain events and help predict and control reality. Their explanations are constructed in such a way as to block the triggering of presuppositions.

By contrast, good poets and novelists are masters of the narrative mode. Their stories are especially effective when, in Bruner’s words, they “mean more than they can say.” A good story triggers presuppositions. Good stories give birth to many different meanings, generating “children” of meaning in their own image.

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By