The Literary Mind
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14 .8 THE LITERARY MIND
These small stories are what a human being has instead of chaotic experi- ence. We know how they go. They are the knowledge that goes unnoticed but makes life possible. We do not need to worry about our movements or our inter- action with the world because we have absolute confidence in these stories. They are so essential to life that our mastery of them must be almost entirely uncon- scious; from a biological point of view, we cannot be trusted to run them con- sciously. In important moments, we had better not notice them, just as we had better not notice mechanisms of vision while we are fleeing a predator. We have in fact no practical need to analyze them. Biologically, they must be zmproblematic, making them seem intellectually boring. But they become intellectually inter- esting the moment we lack them.
These stories are inventions. They are essential, but they are invented. This conjunction of adjectives may seem paradoxical if we think of essential things (like a heartbeat) as compulsory or necessary and invented things (like a light bulb) as optional. In that way of thinking, what is essential and what is invented must be contraries. But although these small spatial stories are inventive con- structions of the human mind, they are not optional. The necessary biology and the necessary experience of any normal human infant inevitably produce a capac- ity for story in the infant. It is not possible for a human infant to fail to achieve the concept of a container, for example, or liquid, or pouring, or flowing, or a path, or movement along a path, or the product of these concepts: the small spatial story in which liquid is poured and flows along a path into a container. Our core indispensable stories not only can be invented, they must be invented if we are to survive and have human lives.
We can see their status as inventions by contrasting them with alterna- tive representations of the world. When we watch someone sitting down into a chair, we see what physics cannot recognize: an animate agent performing an intentional act involving basic human-scale categories of events like sitting and objects like chair. But physics offers a representation of the world that leaves out agency, motive, intentionality, and a range of structure that is part of the conceptual equipment of everyone, including physicists. The basic ele- ments of physics are not tied to the human scale; sitting and chair are elements of story but not elements of physics. The fundamental units of physics exist at levels that are foreign to us—subatomic quarks, metrics of space-time, inte- grations from zero to infinity. Where physics offers an impenetrable but accu- rate physical description in the form of a wave equation, story offers Einstein sitting in a chair.
In our small stories, we distinguish objects from events, objects from other objects, and events from other events. We categorize some objects as belonging
HUMAN MEANING Q. 15
to the category person and other objects as belonging to the category t/Jair. We recognize what a person does with a chair as belonging to the category sitting.
We understand our experience in this way because we are built evolution- arily to learn to distinguish objects and events and combine them in small spa- tial stories at human scale in a way that is useful for us, given that we have human bodies. This is what the human brain does best, although a divine intelligence with a God’s—eye View might have no use for the human concepts object and event, no use for human perceptual categories of kinds of objects and events, and no use for small spatial stories.
There is a general story to human existence: It is the story of how we use story, projection, and parable to think, beginning at the level of small spatial sto- ries. Yet this level, although fully inventive, is so unproblematic in our experi- ence and so necessary to our existence that it is left out of account as precultural, even though it is the core of culture. When it is left out of account, the human condition can appear to have no general story. As Clifford Geertz has observed,
It is necessary then to be satisfied with swirls, confluxions, and incon- stant connections; clouds collecting, clouds dispersing. There is no gen- eral story to be told, no synoptic picture to be had. Or if there is, no one, certainly no one wandering into the middle of them like Fabrice at Waterloo, is in a position to construct them, neither at the time nor later. VVhat we can construct, if we keep notes and survive, are hind- sight accounts of the connectedness of things that seem to have hap- pened: pieced-together patternings, after the fact.
But Geertz’s claim that there is no general story is itself a general story not of what we know but of how we know, and his story is possible only because there is already in place, behind it, a general story about human thought. The general story is that human beings construct small spatial stories and project them parabolically. Geertz’s story depends upon this general story: Like Hamlet and Polonius, he gives us small spatial stories in which we recognize clouds that col- lect or disperse, shapes that we assign to categories of objects, pieces that we put together, liquids or gases that swirl and flow together, vistas that we see, and so on; and he encourages us to use the mental process of parable to project these small spatial stories we know and must know since we are human onto the story of human culture and knowledge. His description of the absence of a general story begins with small spatial stories and projects them parabolically onto stories of human thought. Its compelling use of story, projection, and parable demonstrates the general story of the human condition-—a story whose existence it denies.
16 .8 THE LITERARY MIND
IMAGE SCHEMAS
How do we recognize objects, events, and stories? Part of the answer has to do with “image schemas.” Mark Johnson and Leonard Talmy—followed more recently by Claudia Brugman, Eve Sweetser, George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, me, and many others—have analyzed linguistic evidence for the existence of image schemas. Image schemas are skeletal patterns that recur in our sensory and motor experience. Motion along a patly, bounded interior, balance, and symmetry are typical image schemas.
Consider the image schema container. Like all image schemas, it is mini- mal. .It has three parts: an interior, an exterior, and a boundary that separates them. We experience many things as containers: a bottle, a bag, a cup, a car, a mountain valley, rooms, houses, cupboards, boxes, chests, and drawers. Two of our most important containers are our heads and our bodies.
We use the image schema motion along a pat}; to recognize locomotion by people, hands reaching out to us, our own hand reaching out, a ball rolling, milk pouring into a cup.
Simple image schemas can combine to form complex image schemas. For example, the goal of the pat}; can be the interior of a container. This combination produces the complex image schema into. Alternatively, the source of the pat}; can be the interior of a container, producing the complex image schema out of The pat}; can intersect a container, producing the complex image schema tljrougla.
There are many other image schemas we use to structure our experience, and thereby to recognize objects and events and place them in categories. Leonard Talmy originally analyzed image schemas of force dynamics such as puslying, pulling, resisting, yielding, and releasing. Other dynamic image schemas include dipping, rising, climbing, pouring, andfalling.
Image schemas arise from perception but also from interaction. We perceive milk flowing into a glass; we interactwith it flowing into our bodies. We recog- nize a category connection between one door and another, one chair and another, one ball and another, one rock and another, one event of pouring and another not only because they share image schemas of shape or part-whole structure, but also because our image schemas for interacting with them are the same. Our image schemas for interacting with an object or an event must be consistent with our image schemas for perceiving it if perception is to provide a basis for action.
To recognize several events as structured by the same image schema is to recognize a category. We have a neurobiological pattern for throwing a small object. This pattern underlies the individual event of throwing a rock and helps us create the category tlyrowin g. We have a neurobiological pattern for reaching
out and picking something up. This pattern underlies an individual event of reaching out and picking something up and helps us create the category rear};- ing out andpicking up.
Every time such a pattern becomes active it is slightly different. If we think of how often we reach out to pick up a glass and under what different conditions the event takes place, we see how varied the actual event is in its exact details each time it occurs. Our bodies are at slightly different orientations to the glass; the glass is slightly nearer or farther away; the glass sits on a slightly different surface; there may be obstructions to be avoided; the glass has a slightly differ- ent shape or weight or texture. We recognize all of the individual events of pick- ing up a glass as belonging to one category in part because they all share a skel- etal complex image schema of dynamic interaction.
Partitioning the world into objects involves partitioning the world into small spatial stories because our recognition of objects depends on the characteristic stories in which they appear: We catch a ball, throw a rock, sit in a chair, pet a dog, take a drink from a glass of water.
PROJECTING IMAGE SCHEMAS
Parable often projects image schemas. When the projection carries structure from a “source” we understand to a “target” we want to understand, the projection conforms to a constraint: The result for the target shall not be a conflict of im- age schemas.
For example, when we map one rich image onto another, the (relevant) image schemas of source and target end up aligned in certain ways. It may seem obvi- ous when we say someone’s head is hanging like a wilted flower, or when Auden describes a solitary man weeping on a bench and “Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted, / Helpless and ugly as an embryo chicken,” that the verti- cality schemas in the source images (flower and chicken) and target image (human head) should align. It may seem equally obvious that part-whole relationships in source and target images should align, that a bounded interior should pro- ject to a bounded interior, that directionality of gaze should correspond in source and target, that relationships of adjacency should correspond, and so on. But in fact it is not at all obvious, however natural it seems. The specific de- tails of the rich images need not correspond, but the relevant image schemas are lined up.
VVhen we project one concept onto another, image schemas again seem to do much of the work. For example, when we project spatiality onto temporality, we project image schemas; we think of time itself, which has no spatial shape, as
18 .8 THE LITERARY MIND
having a spatial shape--linear, for example, or circular. We like to think of events in time, which also have no spatial shape, as having features of spatial shapes— continuity, extension, discreteness, completion, open-endedness, circularity, part- whole relations, and so on. This way of conceiving of time and of events in time arises by projecting skeletal image schemas from space onto time.
We think of causal relations as structured by spatial image schemas such as links and paths. These image schemas need not be static. For example, we have a dynamic image schema in which one thing comes out of another, and we project that image schema to give structure to one of our concepts of causation, as when we say that Italian emerged from its mother, Latin. Abstract reasoning appears to be possible in large part because we project image-schematic structure from spatial concepts onto abstract concepts. We say, for example, “Shame forced him to confess,” even though no physical forces are involved. Forms of social and psy- chological causation are understood by projection from bodily causation that involves physical forces. This is parable.
SECQJENCES
Awoman sees a rock, moves toward it, bends down, picks it up, and stands back up. Her legs, body, and arms begin an amazingly intricate sequence of move- ments. Her hand releases the rock, which follows a trajectory through the air to hit the window, which shatters.
The brain is extremely good at constructing refined and intricate sequences of movement and then executing them, as when we run to catch a baseball. VVilliam H. Calvin’s Cerebral Symphony is a meditation upon whether this capacity might be considered the one central capacity of human intelligence. As Calvin shows, running and walking are marvels of the brain’s ability to com- pose and execute motor sequences. We share the capacity for such sequencing of bodily action with other species. But peculiarly human mental activities also depend upon sequencing. Composing or recognizing a musical phrase, speak- ing or listening to a sentence, and telling or understanding a story are all examples of our ability to recognize or execute a sequence that counts as a whole. The sequential nature of speech has historically been recognized as one of the defining features of language. Many cognitive scientists have observed that the human brain is uncommonly sophisticated in its capacity for constructing sequences.
To recognize small spatial stories requires us to recognize not only objects involved in events, but also sequences of these situations. The ball is pushed; it rolls; it encounters an obstacle; it knocks the obstacle over, or the obstacle stops the ball. In another small spatial story, our father’s hand grasps an object and
HUMAN MEANING Q. 19
moves the object to a position in front of us‘, the hand releases; the hand vvith- draws; we reach out; we touch the object; we grasp the object; we put it into our mouth; we release it; we remove our hand; we chew it; we swallow it.
In recognizing small spatial stories, we are recognizing not just a sequence of particular objects involved in particular events, but also a sequence of objects that belong to categories involved in events that belong to categories. Every time our father places food in front of us, both his actions and the food will be some- what different, and our actions in response will be somewhat different. But we recognize the objects and events as essentially the same, as belonging to the same category. We recognize a general story. Our experiences differ in detail, but we make sense of them as consisting of a repertoire of small spatial stories, repeated again and again.
These small spatial stories are routinely held together by one or more dy- namic image schemas. Consider a fish jumping out of the water through an arc and back into the water, a baseball hit from a bat to fly through an arc into the stands, a rock thrown to hit a distant object, a bird flying from one tree to another. All of these sequences are structured by the image schema of a point moving along a directed path from a source to a goal. This dynamic image schema inherently carries with it a sequence of spatial situations. Consider the image schema of something moving to the edge of a supporting plateau and falling off. This is a temporal sequence combining image schemas. There is no end to the number of particular small spatial stories it structures: a ball rolling off a deck, a keg rolling off a dock, a puddle of tea pouring off the side of a table, a human being walking off a roof.
EXECUTION, RECOGNITION, IMAGINATION
Most of our action consists of executing small spatial stories: getting a glass of juice from the refrigerator, dressing, bicycling to the market. Executing these stories, recognizing them, and imagining them are all related because they are all structured by the same image schemas.
If we see someone pick up a stone and throw it at us, we do not need to wait for the stone to hit us before we can recognize the small spatial story and respond to it. We recognize small spatial stories on the basis of partial information. VVhen we duck, it is because pattern completion tells us the possible end of the small spatial story in which we are hit by the stone. Suppose we see nothing but a stone smashing into a window. We immediately look in the direction from which the stone came to see who or what threw it. Suppose we see only someone’s arm go back, and a few seconds later, a stone hitting a window. We can imagine
2O .8 THE LITERARY MIND
the intermediate sequence in the story. Finally, suppose we see none of the story, but only imagine it with our eyes closed. In this last case, the recognition of the small spatial story has been activated without perception of any of its parts.
PREDICTION, EVALUATION. PLANNING, EXPLANATION
We duck when we see someone cock an arm to throw a stone at us because we are predicting: we recognize the beginning sequence of a small spatial story, imagine the rest, and respond. Narrative imagining is our fundamental form of predicting
VVhen we decide that it is perfectly reasonable to place our plum on the dic- tionary but not the dictionary on our plum, we are both predicting and evaluat- ing. Evaluating the future of an act is evaluating the wisdom of the act. In this way, narrative imagining is also our fundamental form of evaluating.
VVhen we hear something and want to see it, and walk to a new location in order to see it, we have made and executed a plan. We have constructed a story taking us from the original situation to the desired situation and executed the story. The story is the plan. In this way, narrative imagining is our fundamental cognitive instrument for planning.
When a drop of water falls mysteriously from the ceiling and lands at our feet, we try to imagine a story that begins from the normal situation and ends with the mysterious situation. The story is the explanation. Narrative imagining is our fundamental cognitive instrument for explanation.
ANIMACY AND AGENCY
Small spatial stories involve events and objects. We recognize some of these objects as animate actors. From time to time it has been considered philosophi- cally embarrassing that we think of animate actors as causes in themselves. Objects and events seem to have a claim on objective existence, but animacy and agency seem almost supernatural and suspicious as elements of a scientific theory. Many attempts have been made to reduce animacy and agency to simple matters of objects and events. We have eliminated river gods and wind deities and tree spirits from our descriptions of the natural world. But small spatial stories are often populated with animate actors that show no sign of disappear- ing. What are they?