HUMOUR

also spelled Humor (from Latin liquid, or fluid), in early Western physiological theory, one of the four fluids of the body that were thought to determine a person's temperament and features. In the ancient physiological theory still current in the European Middle Ages and later, the four cardinal humours were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile); the variant mixtures of these humours in different persons determined their complexions, or temperaments, their physical and mental qualities, and their dispositions. The ideal person had the ideally proportioned mixture of the four; a predominance of one produced a person who was sanguine (Latin sanguis, blood), phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic. Each complexion had specific characteristics, and the words carried much weight that they have since lost: e.g., the choleric man was not only quick to anger but also yellow-faced, lean, hairy, proud, ambitious, revengeful, and shrewd. By extension, humour in the 16th century came to denote an unbalanced mental condition, a mood or unreasonable caprice, or a fixed folly or vice. also spelled Humor, form of communication in which a complex mental stimulus illuminates or amuses, or elicits the reflex of laughter. Most humour, from the crudest practical joke to the most elegant witticism or comic anecdote, comes from the sudden perception of a relation between two consistent but mutually incompatible contexts. The sudden clash between these two different contexts produces the comic effect because it compels the listener to perceive a given situation in two self-consistent but incompatible frames of reference at the same time. This creative type of mental activity seems to be innately delightful to human beings, at least in the context of a humorous appreciation of life. There is a bewildering variety of moods involved in different forms of humour, but whatever the mixture, it must contain one basic and indispensable ingredient: an impulse, however faint, of aggression, apprehension, or even malice. Sometimes the aggressiveness in humour is obvious, as in children's practical jokes or in the pratfalls of adults. At other times it may be more subtle, as when a pun suddenly makes an earnest conversation appear ridiculous. The elements of aggression and apprehension are so universally common in humour that some writers have theorized that its function is to discharge these emotions in a socially acceptable manner. Laughter serves as a safety valve for the overflow of redundant tensions. Anthropological accounts have often shown that the humour of simpler cultures is quite cruel by modern standards. The literature is rife with accounts of tribesmen laughing at the torments of wounded animals and playing painful practical jokes on one another. This form of play is often too abrasive or divisive for larger or less closely knit social groups, and increasing urbanization has tended to produce less physical and more verbal humour. communication in which the stimulus produces amusement. In all its many-splendoured varieties, humour can be simply defined as a type of stimulation that tends to elicit the laughter reflex. Spontaneous laughter is a motor reflex produced by the coordinated contraction of 15 facial muscles in a stereotyped pattern and accompanied by altered breathing. Electrical stimulation of the main lifting muscle of the upper lip, the zygomatic major, with currents of varying intensity produces facial expressions ranging from the faint smile through the broad grin to the contortions typical of explosive laughter. The laughter and smile of civilized man is, of course, often of a conventional kind, in which voluntary intent substitutes for, or interferes with, spontaneous reflex activity; this article is concerned, however, only with the latter. Once laughter is realized to be a humble reflex, several paradoxes must be faced. Motor reflexes, such as the contraction of the pupil of the eye in dazzling light, are simple responses to simple stimuli whose value to survival is obvious. But the involuntary contraction of 15 facial muscles, associated with certain irrepressible noises, strikes one as an activity without any utilitarian value, quite unrelated to the struggle for survival. Laughter is a reflex but unique in that it has no apparent biological purpose. One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only function seems to be to provide relief from tension. The second related paradox is a striking discrepancy between the nature of the stimulus and that of the response in humorous transactions. When a blow beneath the kneecap causes an automatic upward kick, both stimulus and response function on the same primitive physiological level, without requiring the intervention of the higher mental functions. But that such a complex mental activity as reading a comic story should cause a specific reflex contraction of the facial muscles is a phenomenon that has puzzled philosophers since Plato. There is no clear-cut, predictable response that would tell a lecturer whether he has succeeded in convincing his listeners; but, when he is telling a joke, laughter serves as an experimental test. Humour is the only form of communication in which a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces a stereotyped, predictable response on the physiological reflex level. Thus the response can be used as an indicator for the presence of the elusive quality that is called humouras the click of the Geiger counter is used to indicate the presence of radioactivity. Such a procedure is not possible in any other form of art; and, since the step from the sublime to the ridiculous is reversible, the study of humour provides clues for the study of creativity in general. This article deals with the changing concepts and practice of humour from the time of Aristotle to the influence of the mass media in the contemporary world. Additional reading Guillaume Duchenne (De Boulogne), Le Mcanisme de la physionomie humaine (1862); and Jules-Marie Raulin, Le Rire et les exhilarantes: tude anatomique, psycho-physiologique et pathologique (1900), contain valuable source material on the study of the physiology of laughter, including experiments by the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and the Nobel laureate Charles Richet. Herbert Spencer, in his The Physiology of Laughter, Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects (1910, reprinted 1977), outlined the tension-relieving function of humour, on which Freud elaborated in his Wit and Its Relations to the Unconscious (1916; originally published in German, 1905), with special emphasis on infantile and repressed elements. Henri Bergson, Laughter (1911, reprinted 1937; originally published in French, 1900), is a classic work attempting to derive all types of humour from the contrast between mind and matter. Max F. Eastman, Enjoyment of Laughter (1936), is unique in that he denies the malicious element in laughter. Reginald H. Blyth, Japanese Humor, 2nd ed. (1961), throws a delightful sidelight on a different culture. David H. Monro, Argument of Laughter (1951, reprinted 1963), contains a valuable summary of earlier theories. Arthur Koestler, Insight and Outlook (1949, reprinted 1965), and The Act of Creation (1964, reprinted 1976), attempt to present a synthetic theory of humour and its interrelations with art and discovery. Arthur Koestler