Ga offline met de app Player FM !
“And now for something completely different”: Why do surprises provoke laughter?
Manage episode 430642757 series 1089511
Immanuel Kant called laughter a form of the disappointment of the understanding — which is to say, surprise — for which the body then compensates: “Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd … Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into a nothing.”
But surprises, it turns out, come in many shapes and sizes — from a slip or a fall, to a near-miss when you expected an accident, to an uncanny coincidence where you expected randomness. Does our laughter, then, express delight at the surprise, or a desire to set things straight?
743 afleveringen
Manage episode 430642757 series 1089511
Immanuel Kant called laughter a form of the disappointment of the understanding — which is to say, surprise — for which the body then compensates: “Whatever is to arouse lively, convulsive laughter must contain something absurd … Laughter is an affect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into a nothing.”
But surprises, it turns out, come in many shapes and sizes — from a slip or a fall, to a near-miss when you expected an accident, to an uncanny coincidence where you expected randomness. Does our laughter, then, express delight at the surprise, or a desire to set things straight?
743 afleveringen
ทุกตอน
×Welkom op Player FM!
Player FM scant het web op podcasts van hoge kwaliteit waarvan u nu kunt genieten. Het is de beste podcast-app en werkt op Android, iPhone en internet. Aanmelden om abonnementen op verschillende apparaten te synchroniseren.