What makes a story a story? What makes narrated events meaningful?

I’ve been working on a collection of short stories called Chance that Mimics Choice. This first story written for the collection, “Winter Flies” is included in the latest issue of the Antioch Review.  This story is one of four about a scientist named Meno whose mind gives things and events meanings, sometimes just by putting them side by side or noting a coincidental similarity between two things, and this is how he stumbles on new discoveries and becomes successful, despite his rather sloppy approach to thinking. In short, he overcomes what in Plato is described as “Meno’s Paradox”:

If you know what you’re looking for, inquiry is unnecessary.
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, inquiry is impossible.
Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

The collection as a whole compares how the human mind and nature both discover or create new meanings/functions is this weird and illogical way. I have a few extra print copies of the Antioch Review. If you’d like a free one, email me or contact me in the comment section below.