As E. B. and Katharine S. White wrote in 1941: "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind."#4564•
Instead of summarizing the "Theories of Humor" Wikipedia page, let me tell you a little story about Noel Meyerhof, a beloved office cut-up, who one day is discovered entering jokes into the Multivac supercomputer by a colleague. This is the plot of "Jokester," a 1956 short story from Isaac Asimov, who in his free time was a famed joke-joke freak, releasing three collections over the course of his lifetime.
When confronted, Meyerhof explains his intentions are to figure out where jokes come from, as they seem to have no origin and he has not been satisfied with the existing literature.
"The people who write the books are just guessing," he argues.
"Some of them say we laugh because we feel superior to the people in the joke.
Some say it is because of a suddenly realized incongruity, or a sudden relief from tension, or a sudden reinterpretation of events.
Is there any simple reason? Different people laugh at different jokes.
No joke is universal.
Some people don't laugh at any joke.
Yet what may be most important is that man is the only animal with a true sense of humor; the only animal that laughs." Fortunately for Meyerhof, the Multivac spits out an answer: Aliens made them up!#4576•
Extraterrestrials aside, this is a decent summary of the history of comedy philosophy that would have been available to the Whites. You get references to the three most common theories: 1. Superiority theory dates back to the likes of Plato and Aristotle (though the name wouldn't come until the twentieth century), and argues that we laugh at others' misfortune because it makes us feel better about our own lot in life.
2.
Relief theory is most associated with Sigmund Freud, who believed people laugh to release psychic energy associated with a repressed topic.
3.
Incongruity theory is the most contemporary of the bunch, with many great thinkers offering their spin on the fundamental idea that we laugh at the juxtaposition of a common/rational concept and an uncommon/absurd one.#4571•
To best understand play theory, it helps to think where it evolved from. Man is not the only animal that laughs. Isn't that cute? Though humans are the only animal with the biology to make the noise we think of as laughter, other animals make similar repetitive noises. Our sisters the chimpanzees do it.
As do gorillas, orangutans, and other primates.
Elephants laugh.
Rats make little giggles.
It's possible dogs and cats laugh.
Again, very cute.
"Chimps," writes neuroscientist Robert R.
Provine, "laugh most when tickled, during rough-and-tumble play, and during chasing games." He adds, "Physical contact or threat of such contact is a common denominator of chimp laughter." In contrast, though adult humans' laughter often involves verbal communication, over the last twenty years, researchers have argued that we are doing our version of rough-and-tumbling.
We use comedy as a way to mess around with each other, in the same way chimps tickle each other.
It's why Darwin, who saw comedy in a way similar to how future play theorists would, once called humor a "tickling of the mind."#4586•
"Comedy is a game, a game that imitates life," wrote the French philosopher Henri Bergson in his influential 1900 book on comedy, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.#4582•