Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
laughter requires an indifference, a detachment from sensibility and emotion: it is more difficult to laugh when one is fully aware of the seriousness of a situation. it is difficult to laugh alone, and it is easier to laugh collectively. One who is excluded from a group of people does not laugh with them; there is often a complicity in laughter.
Francis Hutcheson in Thoughts on Laughter (1725) was the first modern thinker to account for humor by the term "incongruity," which became a major concept in the evolution of this field. [25] In this early version, incongruity was mostly a singular clash between two opposing ideas.
In its public management, Darwin understood that his evolutionary theory's relevance to human emotional life could draw an anxious and hostile response.. While preparing the text of The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication in 1866, Darwin began to explore topics related to human ancestry, sexual selection, and emotional life.
Laughter is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, usually audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can rise from such activities as being tickled, [1] or from humorous stories, imagery, videos or ...
Evolutionary theorists have attempted to study and explain the phenomena of laughter and humor in terms of survival benefit. Laughter-like behavior is not unique to humans, but humans do display a much more consistent and complex use of humor and laughter than other animals. [ 6 ]
The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century. Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication , mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals . [ 1 ]
Although the Philogelos is the oldest surviving joke book, there are known to be prior joke books that have since become lost.Athenaeus wrote in the Deipnosophistae that Philip II of Macedon paid for a social club in Athens to write down its members' jokes for him, and joke books are mentioned by characters in Persa and Stichus, two comedies by the 2nd century BC Roman playwright Plautus.
Laughter in animals other than humans describes animal behavior which resembles human laughter. Several non-human species demonstrate vocalizations that sound similar to human laughter. A significant proportion of these species are mammals, which suggests that the neurological functions occurred early in the process of mammalian evolution. [ 1 ]