Narration, Navigation, and Non-Conscious Thought: Neuroscientific and Literary Approaches to the Thinking Body

Despite difficulties in finding an adequate terminology, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists offer empirical evidence that the body thinks. Embodied cognition may be non-conscious rather than conscious, but it can influence conscious activity and initiate thought on its own. This paper works at the intersections of scientific research and narrative studies to probe the following questions: what is the use of cognitive functions if they are non-conscious, and how can bodily movements be detectors for such cognition at work? What processes prompt us to shift from one schematic organization to another, to change our patterns of thought? Beginning with Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day and studies of gesture's influence on learning, the paper then links neuroscientific theory, William James's theory of 'percepts,' and novels by Henry James. Interdisciplinary consensus suggests that the body's non-conscious strategies for spatial navigation activate similar schema for the navigation of mental space. Bodies may instigate shifts between way-finding strategies, enabling cognitive change.