What Makes Us Laugh

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS

humorous. The countering of the belief that ‘the journal Nature S. HARRIS is never printed on pressed haddock’ should not merely surprise you, but seem funny. However, dan- ger trumps humour: it would not be amus- Inside Jokes: ing, for example, if the Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer pressed haddock were the Mind radioactive. MATTHEW M. HURLEY, Humour, the authors DANIEL C. DENNETT suggest, is an element AND REGINALD B. in the cognitive ‘just- ADAMS JR in-time spreading MIT Press: 2011. 384 pp. $29.95, £22.95 activation’ system, by which our brains fit the best overall meaning to the collection of mental scripts or frames it has at its disposal. For example, you may currently be following a ‘reading the journal Nature’ script; perhaps also a ‘sitting at my desk’ script, and maybe a ‘trying not to forget to stop at the grocery store on the way home’ script. The brain is constantly mediating among these frames, charting our course through a fast- moving, life-threatening world. Our ability to fashion ‘just in time’ meaning from this jumble is far from perfect. We are not computers but flesh-and-blood, jerry-built synthesizers of meaning con- structed from the impressions provided by our sense organs, memories and emotions. Humour happens when this operating system detects an error that other parts had overlooked. The brain’s dopaminergic pleas- NEUROSCIENCE ure system rewards that survival-benefiting discovery with a jolt of mirth. The authors explain how their ideas build on previous theories of how humour emerges. What makes us laugh Notably, that it comes from the joke-teller’s position of superiority, as proposed by Aristo- Humour is the brain’s reward for discovering tle and Thomas Hobbes; when an incongruity unexpected errors, says Appletree Rodden. is resolved, as suggested by Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and V. S. Ramachan- dran; on release from internal censors, fol- hotons have mass? I didn’t even know detection of humour” — is a valuable, if not a lowing Sigmund Freud; and from some kinds they were Catholic. full, explanation. A mix of lightness and of surprise, as hypothesized by psychologist Why do some of us find that funny? seriousness, the book also contains a great Jerry M. Suls. It can also be inspired by shifting PInside Jokes surveys the scientific basis of collection of jokes: from awful groaners to our frame of reference, according to Marvin humour and proposes a new theory. It pre- choice quips. Minsky, Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo. sents a brief history of the concept’s develop- The authors propose that humour is a The authors sometimes labour to bend ment from the ancient Greeks to the present, cognitive event, in which an unconscious the phenomena of humour and laughter to discusses the possible origin of laughter from assumption is discov- fit their theory. And their attempt to explain a Darwinian perspective and describes what ered to have been a every reason why humans laugh, smile or is known about jocularity in the brain. “Countering mistake. For exam- experience low-grade mirth is not entirely Co-authored with philosopher Daniel the belief that ple, if on reading this satisfying. To their credit, the authors realize Dennett and psychologist Reginald Adams, ‘the journal magazine you sud- this, and rightly consider their book a valu- the book grew out of the dissertation of Nature is denly become aware able contribution. ■ neuroscientist Matthew Hurley, then at Tufts never printed that the pages are not University in Medford, Massachusetts. The on pressed made of paper but Appletree Rodden is a biochemist, physician authors’ account of why humour and laugh- haddock’ of pressed haddock, and cognitive scientist at the Christian ter exist independently, and how they relate should seem then, they argue, that Hospital of Quakenbrueck, Germany. — such that laughter sometimes “expresses the funny.” should strike you as e-mail: [email protected]