‘To understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social one.’ –Bergson
A new theory of the brain attempts to explain one of the great puzzles of evolutionary biology: why we laugh.
One of the more complex aspects of human behaviour is our universal ability to laugh. Laughter has puzzled behavioural biologists for many years because it is hard to imagine how this strange behaviour has evolved.
Why would laughing individuals be fitter in reproductive terms? And why is this ability is built-in, like sneezing, rather than something we learn, like hunting?Today, we get an interesting insight into these questions along with some tentative answers from Pedro Marijuán and Jorge Navarro at the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud in Spain.
The evolution of laughter, they say, is intimately linked with the evolution of the human brain, itself a puzzle of the highest order. There is widespread belief that the brain evolved rapidly at the same time as human group sizes increased.
Bigger groups naturally lead to greater social complexity. And it’s easy to imagine that things like language and complex social behaviours are the result of brain evolution. But the latest thinking is more subtle.
Known as the social brain hypothesis, this holds that the brain evolved not to solve complicated ecological problems such as how to use tools, how to hunt more effectively and how to cook. Instead, the brain evolved to better cope with the social demands of living in larger groups.
quote { Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic, 1911 | full text }
