…Darwinism. What next, literary calculus? Or perhaps literary kinesiology? I think any lens is possible when reading literature. We read into text and language our own idea/bias. I agree with Einstein that a “theory defines what we can see”, but perhaps, more precisely, we define what theories we see.
manageable imaginations
something more or less
manageable imaginations 
Hmmm… I was going to say the article was interesting, but on reflection, “frustrating” is more apt. Gottschall’s argument — that we should be testing literary hypotheses — is fine, but he gives no examples; instead, he makes untested assertions like, “storytelling has no function whatsoever; it’s just a side effect of human intelligence, an evolutionary byproduct.”
In that light, the last sentence of the article seems rather damning of his own praxis.
(Crikey, what side of the bed did I get out of today?)
I agree with you; at first I found it intriguing, but then I started to think, gee, haven’t we “evolved” past all this?