My all-male book club discussed "The Story-telling Animal" by Jonathon Gottschalk. Somewhat like "freedom" or "justice", there can be a big difference between what one person thinks "story" means and the idea someone else has. It is surprising to me how much of my so-called knowledge is what somebody told me by speech or writing. Demonstrations are rather rare. Much of my life, I accept accounts of this or that from older people, teachers, books, news reports.
I think just about any account of what happened can be considered a story. I sometimes taught a course on how to write a research dissertation or thesis. Basically, I urged students to aim for five chapters.
Introduction - what is the problem
Review - what have others researched, experimented, written, said about the problem
Methodology - what the author did to shed light on the problem
Results - What results the author got
Conclusions and implications - What does the author say the work done means, and what does the author say it all implies, especially for the future
We could say that a thesis or dissertation was the story told by a graduate student to show original thinking and proficiency in research. One aspect of that proficiency is "defending" the work and the writing before a committee of professors or others as quality work that matters, at least a little. Whether it is an explanation and defense of a paper, or a trial related to criminal charges, there are many situations where one listens to a presentation and decides whether to support or reject it.
In fact, many accounts of what happens in our heads, in both the short term and in longer terms, amounts to the presentation of a story that we then accept or reject. When my wife came into the kitchen and found our sweet, loveable little daughter standing on a chair with her arm in the cookie jar, she said "What are you doing?" The little girl was intelligent, brave and quick-witted and she might have said,"I'm getting a cookie to give to my mommy since I love her so." Instead she tried a diversionary statement. She said,"None of your business." Her mother rejected her story but we still feel it was a memorable effort.
