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Abstract
What distinguishes man from animals? Some say conscience, others language. For us, it’s stories. Homo sapiens have always been the product of stories, which they consume in astonishing quantities, from the cave dwellers at Lascaux to our contemporaries stupefied by television series. Now, chance has no place in evolution: if the recurrence of a hereditary trait increases with each generation, that enhances the possibility of the species surviving. Modern man is the result of millions of years of evolution; if he continues to tell stories, he obviously must benefit from them. But what sorts of benefits? We will show in this essay that stories have a double function as a source of memory and simulation. They are also at the heart of the ordering of our memories, of historical narrative, of science and just about all forms of knowledge. In conclusion we will discuss Wikipedia as the ultimate refuge for intellectual debate.
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Antoine Bello
Antoine Bello (born 25 March 1970) is a French-American author who writes in French, his mother tongue. Bello touches on multiple subjects, such as the relation between reality and fiction, human cognition and journalism. His main body of work, known as The Falsifiers Trilogy, centers around a secret international organization, which falsifies reality and rewrites history. Bello has won numerous awards, including the Prix France Culture—Telerama for Les Éclaireurs and the Prix Version Femina for L’Homme qui s’envola. His books have been widely translated.