Life is an Adventure! An agent-based reconciliation of narrative and scientific worldviews

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(ECCO working paper 2009-11, version 0.3, December 2, 2009)

Life is an Adventure!

An agent-based reconciliation of narrative and
scientific worldviews

Francis Heylighen

ECCO, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Abstract: The scientific worldview is based on laws, which are supposed to be
certain, objective, and independent of time and context. The narrative worldview
found in literature, myth and religion, is based on stories, which relate the events
experienced by a subject in a particular context with an uncertain outcome. This paper
argues that the concept of “agent”, supported by the theories of evolution, cybernetics
and complex adaptive systems, allows us to reconcile scientific and narrative
perspectives. An agent follows a course of action through its environment with aim
of maximizing its fitness. Navigation along that course combines the strategies of
regulation, exploitation and exploration, but needs to cope with often-unforeseen
diversions. These can be positive (affordances, opportunities), negative (disturbances,
dangers) or neutral (surprises). The resulting sequence of encounters and actions can
be conceptualized as an adventure. Thus, the agent appears to play the role of the hero
in a tale of challenge and mystery that is very similar to the "monomyth", the basic
storyline that underlies all myths and fairy tales according to Campbell [1949]. This
narrative dynamics is driven forward in particular by the alternation between prospect
(the ability to foresee diversions) and mystery (the possibility of achieving an as yet
absent prospect), two aspects of the environment that are particularly attractive to
agents. This dynamics generalizes the scientific notion of a deterministic trajectory by
introducing a variable “horizon of knowability”: the agent is never fully certain of its
further course, but can anticipate depending on its degree of prospect.

Introduction

People have always been searching for a conceptual framework that helps them to
understand their place within the cosmos and that gives a meaning to their life.
Perhaps the best term for such an encompassing philosophical system is a worldview
[Aerts, Apostel et al., 1994]. When considering worldviews, we can distinguish two
main “families” of contenders: mythical-religious, and scientific. The former are the
oldest ones, dating back to the origins of humanity. The latter are relatively recent,
having emerged with Enlightenment and the Industrial revolution. Due to its great

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