Natural / The Seductive Myth by Alan Levinovitz, p 18
People don’t just live by archetypal myths—they are constituted by them. As the scholar of myth Bruce Lincoln has argued, myth is ideology in narrative form. Want to know what someone stands for? Look to the myths that shape them. Group identity, from religion to politics, depends on an investment in a few foundational stories, which serve as justifications of one’s preferred moral and social order. This is why mythically justified beliefs are so resistant to evidence: changing them means changing yourself.
This is what I think, when colleagues say, that a paper needs a story.