My goal today is to disentangle narrative reasoning from verbal reasoning. I shall begin with the easier task of closely characterizing verbal reasoning. First, verbal reasoning relies on extended syllogisms. A mathematical proof is just a sequence of implicit and explicit syllogisms. The same thing goes for physics and all the other hard sciences. The core reasoning is syllogistic, with bits of information, whether data, mathematical equation, or physical law, coming together to reach conclusions in which great confidence may be placed.
Second, verbal reasoning relies on abstraction. Most syllogisms take the form:
1. General rule applying to an abstractly defined class of concepts.
2. Assertion that a particular datum is a member of that abstractly defined class.
3. Application of general rule to particular datum.
Of course, there are many, many extensions of this concept, mostly involving compound or nested syllogisms.
Third, verbal reasoning relies on precisely defined terminology. Terms such as "set" in mathematics, "force" in physics, or "standing" in law have exact meanings so that they can be applied syllogistically.
Narrative thinking never relies on syllogisms. It deals in causality, just as verbal reasoning does, but verbal reasoning relies on a long chain of logical steps, each small enough to be rigorously proven. Narrative reasoning, however, addresses logical situations that cannot be addressed with the sequential verities of verbal reasoning. Such situations are typified by phenomena with multiple causes and multiple effects. It is sometimes possible to isolate causes and treat them separately using verbal logic, later combining those causes in some simple arithmetic process. However, many complex phenomena defy this "analysis and synthesis" approach. Most notable of these are social phenomena. This is why the great body of our accumulated social wisdom is expressed in narrative.
Second, narrative relies on instantiation rather than abstraction. This is necessary because of the immense complexity of the interrelationships addressed. Consider, for example, the social information communicated in the very first Star Wars movie. You could analyse it to "To be a man, a boy must face danger and find his inner self". But this verbal representation captures only a tiny fraction of the information content of the movie. The movie addresses many other factors in the maturation of Luke Skywalker: the importance of a stong father image, the need to endure the loss of that father image, the role of physical courage, the proper place of moral courage, the importance of helping others, the value of social bonding, and so on. I suppose that all this could be replaced with a book-length compendium of hortatory abstractions, but even then I doubt its effectiveness: verbal reasoning without verbal proof catches in our craw, whereas the instantial truth of a single story is irrefutable, and the genuine social information it offers is never directly exposed to verbal assault. For example, when Luke Skywalker discovers that his aunt and uncle have been murdered by imperial stormtroopers, he decides to join Obewan on his mission. His decision cannot be challenged by any application of logic. Granted, had Luke responded in a wholly irrational manner, we might reject the story; but almost any plausible course of action in a narrative is invulnerable to assault on grounds of logic. Verbal logic requires that each step in the sequence be the direct logical consequence of preceeding steps; narrative logic requires only that each step be plausible -- although narrative logic prefers that each step seem natural.
Finally, terminology is irrelevant to narrative. The same story can be reworded in millions of ways with little impact on its effectiveness. The truth of a narrative lies in overarching lessons that arise from a great many sentences, not any particular sentence.
Conclusion: narrative remains useful in addressing matters of complex causality that cannot be subjected to analysis and synthesis.