http://www.axess.se/magasin/english.aspx?article=762 Why We Love Fiction By Brian Boyd
Art, I suggest, is open-ended cognitive play with pattern, with patterns of intersecting patterns, in the information modes that matter most to us: sight, in the visual arts; sound, especially in music; and social information, in fiction.
It takes much repetition and focused attention, as first some new neural connections are made, then more on top of those, then still more on top of those. As the most successful connections strengthen, mental processing becomes more efficient, until the whole network is established and increasingly efficiently tuned and fast-tracked.
To compete for attention with the real and immediate, fictional stories therefore tend to offer high-intensity information, with striking characters, often with unusual powers, facing high stakes and extreme situations.
Ape minds grew in order to deal with complex social relations, and human minds developed still further as we became ultrasocial. Our minds are most finely tuned for understanding agents, that is, any creatures who can act: animal, human, and by extension, monsters, gods and spirits.
As we move into completely offline fictions, we continue to try out new possibilities and roles, testing social options and social emotions. The compulsiveness of story helps us improve our skills of social cognition, of switching perspectives, of seeing from other points of view, of imagining alternative or counterfactual scenarios.
In the same way we have been shaped to savor art and stories more immediately, more viscerally, more emotionally than we can respond to new scientific explanations. Science may help explain why and how art and fiction have come to matter, but that will not give science their emotional impact, nor allow it to find a formula for art or fiction, nor make them matter less. If anything, it will only clarify why and how they matter so much.