Physiological Theories of Humor

Descartes, Spencer, and Freud each put forward their own physiological theories of humor in these excerpts, that is to say that each theorizes of the human functioning of laughter as a purely bodily process, which finds it origin primarily in the ecosystem of the body. For Descartes, this process begins with the lungs, which are inflated by blood from the heart at a sense of wonder, and the gushes of which causes laughter. Descartes thinks that a certain kind of joy, when mixed with evil, produces these gushes of blood which become laughter. However, in Article 125 he writes that laughter does not accompany the greatest joy because in the cases of the greatest joys of human experience the lungs are already so filled with blood that “it cannot be inflated by further gushes.” (Descartes 125). Spencer and Freud both subscribed to the “hydraulic” theory of humor and saw laughter as an explosion of energy, specifically nervous energy, that was previously stored within the body and is released when aggravated by a certain stimulus. This struck me as a process similar to a chemical reaction due its chain of causes and effects. Freud added a further complication by introducing three different types of laughter: that caused by joking, comedy, and humor. While I am intrigued by the physiological analysis of humor and laughter in the readings and feel I have a better understanding of the bodily causes and methods of laughter, I feel an overly scientific approach to humor lends itself to ignorance of the more relevant and pressing questions about humor, namely, why do some people laugh at things that others are abhorred by? Or why do we laugh at anything at all? What is the structure of a joke and is there an ideal structure? I tend to believe that humor should be analyzed from an artistic rather than a scientific approach, and while there is value in these authors’ writings, I am left wanting for answers to more subjective questions.