LAST night I finished a jigsaw puzzle after working on it for six months. I was really pleased with myself, because it said “2-3 years” on the box.
Trying to work out why you did, or didn’t, just laugh has taxed some of the world’s greatest thinkers. Freud thought that good jokes helped release repressed anxiety, Thomas Hobbes believed they made people feel superior to others, and Immanuel Kant was convinced they generated a sense of surprise. In Inside Jokes Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett and Reginald Adams review these classic theories and present their own thoughts about why we laugh.…
