I’m assuming that everyone likes a story. Whether they read it, or listen to it, be it fiction, reality, a song or whatever. So, why do we like them? Indulge me for a moment…

I was eating my lunch today and thinking about how everything is math—I know I’m generalizing, but you’ll get the idea. Physics is math. Chemistry is physics is math. Biology is chemistry is physics is math. Music is pattern is math (at least good music is.) Art is like music and geometry and is math, but probably subconsciously. Philosophy uses lots of math. Language—is it math? Well, it follows rules but is it math like? Maybe efficient communication is math-ish.

Anyway, this got me thinking. Do we like stories because they are puzzles with rules and clues and conventions that (might be math like) we can use to try to reach their conclusions on our own? Is the fun of a story just in being told a story, of does it engage us when we think we can figure out where the author is leading us before we get to the destination?

I like mysteries a lot, so maybe I’m predisposed to accepting this theory. Then again, maybe we’re all little detectives trying to solve everyone’s literary puzzles.