An evolutionary and cognitive account of the addictive mind candy that is humor.Some things are funny-jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed-but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature-aka natural selection-cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.
- ISBN:
- 9780262518697
- 9780262518697
-
Category:
- Social & political philosophy
- Format:
- Paperback / softback
- Publication Date:
-
08-02-2013
- Language:
- English
- Publisher:
- MIT Press Ltd
- Country of origin:
- United States
- Pages:
- 376
- Dimensions (mm):
- 229x152x19mm
- Weight:
- 0.5kg
This title is in stock with our US supplier and is sent from our Sydney warehouse within 10 working days of you placing an order.
Once received into our warehouse we will despatch it to you with a Shipping Notification which includes online tracking.
Please check the estimated delivery times below for your region, for after your order is despatched from our warehouse:
ACT Metro 2 working days
NSW Metro 2 working days
NSW Rural 2 - 3 working days
NSW Remote 2 - 5 working days
NT Metro 3 - 6 working days
NT Remote 4 - 10 working days
QLD Metro 2 - 4 working days
QLD Rural 2 - 5 working days
QLD Remote 2 - 7 working days
SA Metro 2 - 5 working days
SA Rural 3 - 6 working days
SA Remote 3 - 7 working days
TAS Metro 3 - 6 working days
TAS Rural 3 - 6 working days
VIC Metro 2 - 3 working days
VIC Rural 2 - 4 working days
VIC Remote 2 - 5 working days
WA Metro 3 - 6 working days
WA Rural 4 - 8 working days
WA Remote 4 - 12 working days
