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La mente a più dimensioni
In this characteristically graceful and provocative book, Jerome Bruner, one of the principal architects of the cognitive revolution, sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of mind. According to Professor Bruner, cognitive science has set its sights too narrowly on the logical, systematic aspects of mental life--those thought processes we use to solve puzzles, test hypotheses, and advance explanations. There is obviously another side to the mind--a side devoted to the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful. This is the side of the mind that leads to good stories, gripping drama, primitive myths and rituals, and plausible historical accounts. Bruner calls it the "narrative mode," and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.
Drawing on recent work in literary theory, linguistics, and symbolic anthropology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology Professor Bruner examines the mental acts that enter into the imaginative creation of possible worlds, and he shows how the activity of imaginary world making undergirds human science, literature, and philosophy, as well as everyday thinking, and even our sense of self.
Over twenty years ago, Jerome Bruner first sketched his ideas about the mind's other side in his justly admired book On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds can be read as a sequel to this earlier work, but it is a sequel that goes well beyond its predecessor by providing rich examples of just how the mind's narrative mode can be successfully studied. The collective force of these examples points the way toward a more humane and subtle approach to the investigation of how the mind works.
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
49 people are currently reading
729 people want to read
About the author
Jerome Bruner
92 books82 followersJerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist predominately in the fields of developmental, educational, and legal psychology, and is one of the pioneers of the cognitive psychology movement in the United States. He is a senior research fellow at the New York University School of Law. He received his B.A. in 1937 from Duke University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1941. During World War II, Bruner served on the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force Europe committee under Eisenhower, researching social psychological phenomena.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 26, 2022
Accessible and lucid, psychologist Bruner's text focuses on the power of narrative to imagine possible worlds. As in fiction. Most folks on the science end of the knowledge spectrum seem to have little use for fiction, but Harvard Psychology Professor Bruner (with several other Harvard luminaries such as Clifford Geertz in Anthropology) took the idea of a "narrative mind" seriously in the solving of real human problems.
The one thing I found problematic (that he later corrected in later works in his approach to the mind) is that he saw thinking as essentially divided into two categories, analytical and narrative--and limited to that binary. My view is that narrative permeates all thinking, it is fundamental in everyone's construction of reality, and this is something he came to agree with me about, eventually. :)
For readers of fiction, Bruner saw all narrative as important to life, including fictions, in the process of imagining possible futures, something the world desperately needs. This book is still very useful and important today. It emerged as part of the late seventies and eighties "narrative turn" in the disciplines worldwide.
The one thing I found problematic (that he later corrected in later works in his approach to the mind) is that he saw thinking as essentially divided into two categories, analytical and narrative--and limited to that binary. My view is that narrative permeates all thinking, it is fundamental in everyone's construction of reality, and this is something he came to agree with me about, eventually. :)
For readers of fiction, Bruner saw all narrative as important to life, including fictions, in the process of imagining possible futures, something the world desperately needs. This book is still very useful and important today. It emerged as part of the late seventies and eighties "narrative turn" in the disciplines worldwide.
July 6, 2020
Bruner identifies extremely interesting questions. There is the question of the nature of language, and the question of the relation between science and art. The two turn out to be deeply interrelated. The answers he delivers are on-point and set out an exciting research agenda for future psychologists and philosophers. Moreover, his writing is extremely lucid and readable; and he has a masterful grasp of a broad range of philosophers, and connects particular psychologists and psychological theories up with philosophical traditions. This book will be equally interesting for the student of psychology who wants to understand and perhaps challenge the fundamental assumptions of their field; and for the student of philosophy who yearns for contemporary philosophy that actually deals with the human condition and makes progress on that.
The guiding question is this. Bruner analyzes language in terms of two distinct modes by which we use it. There is the "logico-scientific mode" and the "narrative mode". The former is exemplified in science and certain strands of contemporary philosophy; it consists in formulating verifiable hypotheses about the world. In doing so, it cares only for generalized, universal concepts of phenomena, and aims to abstract away from any particularities of phenomena that are rooted in our observations and experiences of them. The formulations of and associations drawn between such concepts are guided by principles of formal logic. The well-formedness of a hypothesis drawn in this mode is epistemic in nature; a hypothesis is well-formed if it is true (i.e., corresponds to states of affairs or facts of the world).
The narrative mode stands in stark contrast. This mode is exemplified in storytelling, including our everyday thoughts about what has happened, or what might happen; or our everyday experiences of noticing what others are thinking about, who they are, etc. Both literature and narrative-based approaches in history rely on this mode. This mode deals with concrete instances of human intentionality: particular thoughts, feelings, and actions. The well-formedness of a story (i.e., explanation or description of one's own or anther's intentional state) is a matter of whether the story is believable; that is, whether it offers a coherent, intelligible perspective that a real or potential person/character might have.
Bruner argues that these two modes are distinct and irreducible to one another. This is contrary to the assumption in science and philosophy that the logico-scientific mode is more fundamentally correct, and the narrative mode ought to be, and can be, reduced to this mode. Bruner's argument consists in appealing to Kantian transcendental idealism and Nelson Goodman's work on world-making. There is no single, objective world that we can access. Any world is already formed from a perspective and is constructed on the basis of presumed concepts.
Science and art are identical with respect to creating and re-creating possible worlds. For example, science has created the world of sub-atomic particles, which we cannot perceive but can imagine as existing beneath the surface of our experienced reality. Art (let's say Oedipus Rex) has created the world of human tragedy, the framework of organizing our experiences that consists in the insights that there is much that is beyond our control, and we must accept and be responsible for our actions that are not fully our own. Bruner understands that the reality that we take for granted and see everyday has been shaped by both science and art. The works produced in each domain offer maps or principles of organization that re-structure our experience.
Bruner investigates how it is possible for science and art to have this power. He locates this power in our immersion in language. Bruner argues that any case of language use implies a particular perspective upon the world. Even uttering a seemingly totally factual, evaluation-free statement (e.g, "the cat is on the mat") implies a perspective that locates the cat and the mat as important or salient objects, as opposed to all the objects that are less important and so are not named; and depending on the context of this utterance, there is a greater discourse, which would contribute to this perspective's offering particular shades of meaning of a cat and a mat (e.g., if the discourse is one between friends in the U.S. who have been exposed to the crazy-cat-lady stereotype, perhaps the notion of the cat involves meanings pertaining to that; hence, the seemingly factual utterance actually puts us into a particular, evaluative perspective).
So in using language, we transport ourselves into particular perspectives that can be possibly had onto the world. Bruner examines the psychological theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, and Freud to provide a bit more empirical detail on how language exactly performs this function (my only dissatisfaction with this book is that there is not much empirical detail; the explanations remain at a very general, sketchy level; but this is not Bruner's fault, since there are just no nuanced theories about this subject matter available at this time; it's an ongoing topic of study). The pursuits of both science and art lead people to discover new perspectives on the world; and these get encoded in language. Then, when we use language, we can embody these perspectives; in doing so, the world shows up anew for us, and we can become familiarized with these new aspects of the world to a sufficient enough extent that these aspects will show up regularly or habitually. Our worlds are transformed.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in (1) a critical perspective on science, or in ways to challenge the assumption that there's a single, absolute physical world that is the bar of measurement of the truthfulness of any of our beliefs, (2) the relationship between science and art, (3) the nature of language, from an embodied, pragmatic angle, or (4) a humanistic and plausible paradigm shifter from certain traditional ways of doing psychology and philosophy. Bruner remarkably satisfies all of these interests in this elegant, enjoyable book.
The guiding question is this. Bruner analyzes language in terms of two distinct modes by which we use it. There is the "logico-scientific mode" and the "narrative mode". The former is exemplified in science and certain strands of contemporary philosophy; it consists in formulating verifiable hypotheses about the world. In doing so, it cares only for generalized, universal concepts of phenomena, and aims to abstract away from any particularities of phenomena that are rooted in our observations and experiences of them. The formulations of and associations drawn between such concepts are guided by principles of formal logic. The well-formedness of a hypothesis drawn in this mode is epistemic in nature; a hypothesis is well-formed if it is true (i.e., corresponds to states of affairs or facts of the world).
The narrative mode stands in stark contrast. This mode is exemplified in storytelling, including our everyday thoughts about what has happened, or what might happen; or our everyday experiences of noticing what others are thinking about, who they are, etc. Both literature and narrative-based approaches in history rely on this mode. This mode deals with concrete instances of human intentionality: particular thoughts, feelings, and actions. The well-formedness of a story (i.e., explanation or description of one's own or anther's intentional state) is a matter of whether the story is believable; that is, whether it offers a coherent, intelligible perspective that a real or potential person/character might have.
Bruner argues that these two modes are distinct and irreducible to one another. This is contrary to the assumption in science and philosophy that the logico-scientific mode is more fundamentally correct, and the narrative mode ought to be, and can be, reduced to this mode. Bruner's argument consists in appealing to Kantian transcendental idealism and Nelson Goodman's work on world-making. There is no single, objective world that we can access. Any world is already formed from a perspective and is constructed on the basis of presumed concepts.
Science and art are identical with respect to creating and re-creating possible worlds. For example, science has created the world of sub-atomic particles, which we cannot perceive but can imagine as existing beneath the surface of our experienced reality. Art (let's say Oedipus Rex) has created the world of human tragedy, the framework of organizing our experiences that consists in the insights that there is much that is beyond our control, and we must accept and be responsible for our actions that are not fully our own. Bruner understands that the reality that we take for granted and see everyday has been shaped by both science and art. The works produced in each domain offer maps or principles of organization that re-structure our experience.
Bruner investigates how it is possible for science and art to have this power. He locates this power in our immersion in language. Bruner argues that any case of language use implies a particular perspective upon the world. Even uttering a seemingly totally factual, evaluation-free statement (e.g, "the cat is on the mat") implies a perspective that locates the cat and the mat as important or salient objects, as opposed to all the objects that are less important and so are not named; and depending on the context of this utterance, there is a greater discourse, which would contribute to this perspective's offering particular shades of meaning of a cat and a mat (e.g., if the discourse is one between friends in the U.S. who have been exposed to the crazy-cat-lady stereotype, perhaps the notion of the cat involves meanings pertaining to that; hence, the seemingly factual utterance actually puts us into a particular, evaluative perspective).
So in using language, we transport ourselves into particular perspectives that can be possibly had onto the world. Bruner examines the psychological theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, and Freud to provide a bit more empirical detail on how language exactly performs this function (my only dissatisfaction with this book is that there is not much empirical detail; the explanations remain at a very general, sketchy level; but this is not Bruner's fault, since there are just no nuanced theories about this subject matter available at this time; it's an ongoing topic of study). The pursuits of both science and art lead people to discover new perspectives on the world; and these get encoded in language. Then, when we use language, we can embody these perspectives; in doing so, the world shows up anew for us, and we can become familiarized with these new aspects of the world to a sufficient enough extent that these aspects will show up regularly or habitually. Our worlds are transformed.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in (1) a critical perspective on science, or in ways to challenge the assumption that there's a single, absolute physical world that is the bar of measurement of the truthfulness of any of our beliefs, (2) the relationship between science and art, (3) the nature of language, from an embodied, pragmatic angle, or (4) a humanistic and plausible paradigm shifter from certain traditional ways of doing psychology and philosophy. Bruner remarkably satisfies all of these interests in this elegant, enjoyable book.
January 17, 2011
Dry to the point of unnecessarily unreadable, poorly organized with occasional little gems of thought. Probably a good book to read about rather than actually try to read. Might be a lot better if you're reading it as from a literary perspective rather than educator trying to learn about learning.
Currently reading
November 17, 2010I'm still on page 5.
June 17, 2017
Narrative constructs how we view and make sense of the world and who we are in that (infinite varieties of) the world. Constructivist.
December 23, 2021
Recently, I have been reading a bit on social construction and constructivist arguments about the social reality that we live in. Those arguments have focused on the construction of material facts, institutions, social conventions. The part that I did not recognize as missing, because I was taking it for granted, is how the individual mind becomes part of and contributes to the constructed social. This work is central to Bruner's argument.
Much of the focus is on what Bruner calls a "narrative mode" of thought, which is a way of engaging with the world and the minds that reside in it through narrative (e.g., prose, poetry, history, etc.). He then constructs an argument about how the interpretive flexibility and purposeful engagement of narrative builds a transactive relationship with individual minds. As readers, we envision possible worlds in those narratives, worlds that connect with and modify the experiences that we bring. It is through our engagement with narratives that we construct "right versions" of the world that we act upon until we come into contact with other minds and the narratives that they bring, which then results in additional, transactive reordering of experience. Iterate this process enough and it becomes clear how social reality starts to form.
Bruner's argument about narrative and its transactive effects still rings true, but the presupposition that people are willing to seek out narratives that challenge or at least alter their ordered sense of the world seems less true today than it must have in the mid 1980's. So, too, does the presupposition of a narrative's presumed honesty. The ease with which people can control the narratives that they do interact with (via filter bubbles, e.g.) and the unreliability of some narratives shows how this transactive relationship can just as easily reinforce bias or create parallel, hostile realities, especially if minds do not come into contact with others or with narratives that challenge their experiences. This is not to say that Bruner's argument is outdated, rather, I think it argues for new and continued life for this work investigating how our modern media environment leads to a retrenchment of experience.
Highly recommend. The argument is clear, well researched, and compelling.
Much of the focus is on what Bruner calls a "narrative mode" of thought, which is a way of engaging with the world and the minds that reside in it through narrative (e.g., prose, poetry, history, etc.). He then constructs an argument about how the interpretive flexibility and purposeful engagement of narrative builds a transactive relationship with individual minds. As readers, we envision possible worlds in those narratives, worlds that connect with and modify the experiences that we bring. It is through our engagement with narratives that we construct "right versions" of the world that we act upon until we come into contact with other minds and the narratives that they bring, which then results in additional, transactive reordering of experience. Iterate this process enough and it becomes clear how social reality starts to form.
Bruner's argument about narrative and its transactive effects still rings true, but the presupposition that people are willing to seek out narratives that challenge or at least alter their ordered sense of the world seems less true today than it must have in the mid 1980's. So, too, does the presupposition of a narrative's presumed honesty. The ease with which people can control the narratives that they do interact with (via filter bubbles, e.g.) and the unreliability of some narratives shows how this transactive relationship can just as easily reinforce bias or create parallel, hostile realities, especially if minds do not come into contact with others or with narratives that challenge their experiences. This is not to say that Bruner's argument is outdated, rather, I think it argues for new and continued life for this work investigating how our modern media environment leads to a retrenchment of experience.
Highly recommend. The argument is clear, well researched, and compelling.
February 19, 2021
"Twenty-odd years ago, engaged in research on the psychological nature and development of thought, I had one of those mild crises so endemic to students of mind. The Apollonian and the Dionysian, the logical and the intuitive, were at war. Gustave Theodor Fechner, the founder of modern experimental psychology, had called them the Tagesansicht and Nachtansicht. My own research had taken me more and more deeply into the study of logical inference, the strategies by which ordinary people penetrate to the logical structure of the regularities they encounter in a world that they create through the very exercise of mind that they use for exploring it.
I also read novels, went to films, let myself fall under the spell of Camus, Conrad, Robbe-Grillet, Sartre, Burgess, Bergman, Joyce, Antonioni. From time to time, almost as if to keep some balance between night and day, I wrote essays — about Freud, the modern novel, metaphor, mythology, painting. They were informal and 'literary' rather than 'systematic' in form, however psychologically motivated they may have been."
I also read novels, went to films, let myself fall under the spell of Camus, Conrad, Robbe-Grillet, Sartre, Burgess, Bergman, Joyce, Antonioni. From time to time, almost as if to keep some balance between night and day, I wrote essays — about Freud, the modern novel, metaphor, mythology, painting. They were informal and 'literary' rather than 'systematic' in form, however psychologically motivated they may have been."
August 7, 2023
Es el primer bosquejo de la propuesta del pensamiento narrativo en Bruner. Se compone de varios artículos que giran alrededor de el relato como un instrumento cultural para la generación de mundos posibles y horizontes de significado.
July 8, 2019
A difficult, extremely "meta" book about the psychology and cognitive activity involved in perceiving art, literature, poetry, drama. What happens in our mind, linguistically, culturally, even morally, when we read and interpret a story or a poem? You'll need patience and some psychology/history of psychology under your belt to read this book. It's a challenge to read, but I found it worthwhile: not just for many intriguing ideas, but also for many good book recommendations laced throughout the book and footnotes.
July 5, 2017
Chapter 9 is one of the best descriptions of constructionism that I have seen.
"There is no aboriginal world that exists apart from our understanding".
"There is no aboriginal world that exists apart from our understanding".
December 7, 2018
Too limited.
August 20, 2023
Bruner is a fun writer who makes you think.
November 24, 2024
Illuminante saggio sull’importanza del narrative thinking. Da studiare approfonditamente oltre ad essere una lettura piacevole per chi si interessa di educazione, psicologia e narratologia.
August 15, 2022
Very dry read with old long sentence style- dropped after 20 pages
Reco by: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01...
A good story and a well-formed argument are both for convincing another. Yet arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness. How to know truth VS. how to endow experience with meaning; information VS. wisdom; logical connections vs seeing possible connections
To make good stories, construct two landscapes: One of action: intention, situation, and other of consciousness: what people think, or feel, or do not think, or feel.
Even this is explained by a story: Bruner illustrates brilliantly with an exchange between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan from Italo Calvino’s masterwork Invisible Cities:
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”
It's more than even the arch- it's the chasms they safely bridge, the beauty sensed, the possibilities— goes back and forth between them in attempting finally to construct a sense of the story, its form, its meaning.
Reco by: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01...
A good story and a well-formed argument are both for convincing another. Yet arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness. How to know truth VS. how to endow experience with meaning; information VS. wisdom; logical connections vs seeing possible connections
To make good stories, construct two landscapes: One of action: intention, situation, and other of consciousness: what people think, or feel, or do not think, or feel.
Even this is explained by a story: Bruner illustrates brilliantly with an exchange between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan from Italo Calvino’s masterwork Invisible Cities:
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”
It's more than even the arch- it's the chasms they safely bridge, the beauty sensed, the possibilities— goes back and forth between them in attempting finally to construct a sense of the story, its form, its meaning.
April 28, 2012
Another book for class. Less scientific that all the others I've read so far, so I have a much greater understanding of the book!
Want to read
January 24, 2016This book is highlighted in a Brain Pickings review on the psychology of what makes a great story.
Want to read
December 6, 2016Cited in Telling Our Own Story: The Role of Narrative in Racial Healing http://perception.org//wp-content/upl...
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