Read The Act of Creation Online
Authors: Arthur Koestler
The Act of Creation (5 page)
An extreme variant of the puppet motif is Jack-in-the-Box, symbol of the
stubborn, mechanical repetitiveness, but also of the indestructibility,
of life. Its opposite number is the legendary monster who instantly
grows a new tentacle or head when the hero has cut it off; or the old
woman in Raskolnikof's dream who, after each stroke of the axe on her
skull, turns round and laughs in his face. In the biological sciences,
Jack-in-the-Box is a familiar figure, represented in all processes of
the trigger-release type -- the muscle-twitch, the epileptic fit, the
'sign-releasers' of the animal kingdom, whose symbolic message activates
the springs of hopping mad or tenderly amorous, innate behaviour patterns.
NOTES
To
p. 28
. 'Wit' stems from
witan
,
understanding; whose roots go back (via
videre
and [EIDO])
to the Sanskrit
veda
, knowledge. The German
Witz
means both joke and acumen; it comes from
wissen
, to know;
Wissenschaft
-- science, is a close kin to
Fürwitz
and
Aberwitz
-- presumption, cheek, and jest. French teaches the same
lesson.
Spirituel
may either mean witty or spiritually profound;
to amuse comes from to muse (
à-muser
), and a witty remark
is a
jeu d'esprit
-- a playful, mischievous form of discovery.
The word 'jester', too, has a respectable ancestry. The
chansons de
geste
played a prominent part in medieval literature from the eleventh
to the fifteenth centuries. They were epics centred on heroic events;
their name is derived from the Latin
gesta
: deeds, exploits. With the
coming of the Renaissance, satire tended to replace the epics of chivalry,
and in the sixteenth century the heroic 'geste' turned into 'jest'.
To
p. 32
. A critical discussion of both theories
can be found in Appendix I of
Insight and Outlook
.
To
p. 40
. The choice of the term 'matrix' is less
easy to explain. In an earlier version I used 'feeld' and 'framework',
but 'field' is too vague, and 'frame' too rigid. 'Matrix' is derived from
the Latin for womb and is figurative|y used for any pattern or mould in
which things are shaped and developed, or type is cast. Thus the exercise
of a habit or skill is 'moulded' by its matrix. In mathematics, matrices
are rectangular arrays of numbers capable of all sorts of magic; they can
be subjected to various transformations without losing their identity --
i.e. they are both 'flexible' and 'stable'. Also, matrices have a constant
attached to them, called their 'determinant', which remains unaffected
by any of these transformations. But the analogy between 'determinant'
and 'code' is extremely loose and in more than one respect misleading.
To
p. 43
. Congenitally blind patients, who acquire
vision after surgical operations at a mature age, have great difficulties
in recognizing patterns and faces, and in orienting themselves in
space. Cf. Senden (1932), quoted by Hebb (1949).
To
p. 44
. The dual concepts of matrices and codes
were designed with one eye on psychology, the other on physiology. Their
theoretical implications in this wider context are discussed in
Book Two
.
The reader versed in experimental psychology will have been reminded by
now of such old friends from the Würzburg School as
Aufgabe
,
Einstellung
,
Bewußtseinslage
; and of their Anglo-Saxon
relatives:
determining tendency
,
expectancy
,
task
,
schema
and
set
. He will probably also remember that
J. J. Gibson in a famous article (quoted by Humphrey, 1951, p. 105)
Listed some forty different meanings in which the word
set
was used. I hope to show that
matrices
and
codes
are
concepts at the same time more precise, and of more general validity,
than
Aufgaben
or
sets
.
II
LAUGHTER AND EMOTION
The sudden bisociation of an idea or event with two habitually
incompatible matrices will produce a comic effect, provided that the
narrative, the semantic pipeline, carries the right kind of emotional
tension. When the pipe is punctured, and our expectations are fooled,
the now redundant tension gushes out in laughter, or is spilled in the
gentler form of the sou-rire.
Aggression and Identification
Laughter, as the cliché has it, is 'liberating',
i.e. tension-relieving. Relief from stress is always pleasurable,
regardless whether it was caused by hunger, sex, anger, or anxiety. Under
ordinary circumstances, such relief is obtained by some purposeful
activity which is appropriate to the nature of the tension. When we laugh,
however, the pleasurable relief does not derive from a consummatory
act which satisfies some specific need. On the contrary: laughter
prevents the satisfaction of biological drives, it makes a man equally
incapable of killing or copulating; it deflates anger, apprehension,
and pride. The tension is not consummated -- it is frittered away in
an apparently purposeless reflex, in facial grimaces, accompanied by
over-exertion of the breathing mechanism and aimless gestures. To put
it the other way round: the sole function of this luxury reflex seems
to be the disposal of excitations which have become redundant, which
cannot be consummated in any purposeful manner.
But
why
has the excitation suddenly become 'redundant'; and why is it
discharged in laughter and not, say, in weeping -- which is an equally
'purposeless' activity? The answer to the second half of the question
seems obvious: the kind of excitation exploded in laughter has a different
quality or chemical composition, as it were, from the emotions which
overflow in tears. But the very obviousness of this answer is deceptive,
for the attempt to define this difference in 'quality and composition'
necessitates a new approach to the theory of human emotions.
At first sight there seehis to be a bewildering variety of moods involved
in different types of humour. The practical joke is frankly aggressive;
the lavatory jokes of children are scatological; blue jokes are sexual;
the Charles Addams type of cartoon and the 'sick' joke play on feelings
of horror and disgust; the satirist on righteous indignation. Moreover,
the same type of semantic pipeline can be made to carry different
types of fluid under varying degrees of pressure: for instance, 'they
haven't got a coat to turn' and 'I never aimed as high as that' are
both bisociations of metaphorical and direct meaning -- jokes of the
same logical pattern but with different emotional colouring. The more
sophisticated forms of humour evoke mixed, and sometimes contradictory,
feelings; but whatever the mixture, it must contain one ingredient whose
presence is indispensable: an impulse, however faint, of aggression or
apprehension. It may be manifested in the guise of malice, derision,
the veiled cruelty of condescension, or merely as an absence of
sympathy with the victim of the joke -- a 'momentary anaesthesia of the
heart', as Bergson put it. I propose to call this common ingredient the
'aggressive-defensive' or 'self-asserting' tendency -- the reasons for
choosing this clumsy term will be seen later on. In the subtler types of
humour this tendency is so faint and discreet that only careful analysis
will detect it, like the presence of salt in a well-prepared dish --
which, however, would be tasteless without it.
It is the aggressive element, the detached malice of the parodist, which
turns pathos into bathos, tragedy into comedy. It may be combined with
affection, as in friendly teasing; in civilized humour aggression is
sublimated and often unconscious. But in jokes which appeal to children
and primitives, cruelty and boastful self-assertion are much in evidence,
and the same is true of the historically earlier forms and theories of
the comic. 'As laughter emerges with man from the mists of antiquity
it seems to hold a dagger in its hand. There is enough brutal triumph,
enough contempt, enough striking down from superiority in the records of
antiquity and its estimates of laughter to presume that original laughter
may have been wholly animosity.' [1] In the Old Testament there are
(according to Mitchell [2]) twenty-nine references to laughter, out of
which thirteen are linked with scorn, derision, mocking, or contempt,
and only two are 'born out of a joyful and merry heart'. A survey among
America schoolchildren between the ages of eight and fifteen led to the
conclusion (which could hardly have surprised anybody) that 'mortification
or discomfort or hoaxing of others very readily caused laughter, while
a witty or funny remark often passed unnoticed'. [3]
Among the theories of laughter that have been proposed since the days of
Aristotle, the 'theory of degradation' appears as the most persistent. For
Aristotle himself laughter was closely related to ugliness and debasement;
for Cicero 'the province of the ridiculous . . . lies in a certain
baseness and deformity'; for Descartes laughter is a manifestation of joy
'mixed with surprise or hate or sometimes with both'; in Francis Bacon's
list of laughable objects, the first place is taken by 'deformity'. The
essence of the 'theory of degradation' is defined in Hobbes's
Leviathan
:
same theory: 'Not in physical effects alone, but in everything where a
man can achieve a stroke of superiority, in surpassing or discomforting
a rival, is the disposition of laughter apparent.' [4]
For Bergson laughter is the corrective punishment inflicted by society
upon the unsocial individual: 'In laughter we always find an unavowed
intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.' [5]
Max Beerbohm found 'two elements in the public's humour: delight
in suffering, contempt for the unfamiliar'. McDougall believed that
'laughter has been evolved in the human race as an antidote to sympathy,
a protective reaction shielding us from the depressive influence of the
shortcomings of our fellow men.' [6]
Thus on this one point there is agreement among the theorists, ancient
and modern; and not only agreement but exaggeration. One has only to
think of Aristophanes or Calderon;
A Midsummer Night's Dream
or Chateaubriand's
Maximes et Pensées
, to realize that
the aggressive charge detonated in laughter need not be gunpowder;
a grain of Attic salt is enough to act as a catalyst. Furthermore,
we must remember that aggression and self-defence, rage and fear,
hostility and apprehension, are as pairs of twins in their psychology and
physiology. One of the typical situations in which laughter occurs is the
moment of the sudden cessation of danger, real or imaginary; and rarely is
the character of laughter as a discharge-mechanism for redundant tensions
more strikingly manifested than in the sudden change of expression on the
small child's face from anxious apprehension to the happy laugh of relief.
Whatever the composition of the emotional charge which a narrative
carries, it will produce a comic effect only if an aggressive-defensive
tendency, however sublimated, is present in it. You may be deeply moved
by a person's predicament, and yet unable to suppress a smile at its
ludicrous aspect; and the impression of the 'ludicrousness' of another
person's behaviour always implies an assertion -- conscious or unconscious
-- of your own superiority; you smile at his expense.
The emotions which dominate on the opposite side of the triptych do
not concern us as yet; but I must briefly mention them for the sake of
contrast. Listening to Mozart, watching a great actor's performance,
being in love or some other state of grace, may cause a welling up of
happy emotions which moisten the eye or overflow in tears. Compassion and
bereavement may have the same physical effect. The emotions of this class,
whether joyous or sad, include sympathy, identification, pity, admiration,
awe, and wonder. The common denominator of these heterogeneous emotions is
a feeling of participation, identification, or belonging; in other words,
the self is experienced as being a
part of a larger whole
, a higher
unity -- which may be Nature, God, Mankind, Universal Order, or the 'Anima
Mundi'; it may be an abstract idea, or a human bond with persons living,
dead, or imagined. I propose to call the common element in these emotions
the 'participatory' or 'self-transcending' tendencies. This is not meant
in a mystical sense (though mysticism certainly belongs to this class of
emotion); the term is merely intended to convey that in these emotional
states the need is felt to behave as a part of some real or imaginary
entity which transcends, as it were, the boundaries of the individual
self; whereas when governed by the self-assertive class of emotions the
ego is experienced as a self-contained whole and the ultimate value.
As a rule our emotions are complex mixtures in which both tendencies
participate. Thus the emotion called 'love' -- whether sexual or maternal
-- usually contains an aggressive or possessive, self-asserting component,
and an identificatory or self-transcending component. If emotions were
represented by different colours, then the two opposite tendencies would
appear as brightness values (black-white mixtures) superimposed on them.
The subject will be discussed in more detail later (Chapters XI-XV);
readers irritated by these repeated anticipatory excursions may find
some excuse for them in the consideration that the painful vivisection
of the comic, in which they are asked to participate, is not an end in
itself, but a means to uncover the pattern which unites the apparently
so heterogeneous creative activities in humour, art, and discovery.
The Inertia of Emotion
The first to make the suggestion that laughter is a discharge mechanism
for 'nervous energy' seems to have been Herbert Spencer. His essay
on the
Physiology of Laughter
(1860) starts with the proposition:
'Nervous energy always
tends
to beget muscular motion; and when it
rises to a certain intensity always does beget it. . . . Emotions and
sensations tend to generate bodily movements, and . . . the movements are
violent in proportion as the emotions or sensations are intense.' Hence,
he concludes, 'when consciousness is unawares transferred from great
things to small' the 'liberated nerve force' will expend itself along
the channels of least resistance, which are the muscular movements
of laughter.
stubborn, mechanical repetitiveness, but also of the indestructibility,
of life. Its opposite number is the legendary monster who instantly
grows a new tentacle or head when the hero has cut it off; or the old
woman in Raskolnikof's dream who, after each stroke of the axe on her
skull, turns round and laughs in his face. In the biological sciences,
Jack-in-the-Box is a familiar figure, represented in all processes of
the trigger-release type -- the muscle-twitch, the epileptic fit, the
'sign-releasers' of the animal kingdom, whose symbolic message activates
the springs of hopping mad or tenderly amorous, innate behaviour patterns.
NOTES
To
p. 28
. 'Wit' stems from
witan
,
understanding; whose roots go back (via
videre
and [EIDO])
to the Sanskrit
veda
, knowledge. The German
Witz
means both joke and acumen; it comes from
wissen
, to know;
Wissenschaft
-- science, is a close kin to
Fürwitz
and
Aberwitz
-- presumption, cheek, and jest. French teaches the same
lesson.
Spirituel
may either mean witty or spiritually profound;
to amuse comes from to muse (
à-muser
), and a witty remark
is a
jeu d'esprit
-- a playful, mischievous form of discovery.
The word 'jester', too, has a respectable ancestry. The
chansons de
geste
played a prominent part in medieval literature from the eleventh
to the fifteenth centuries. They were epics centred on heroic events;
their name is derived from the Latin
gesta
: deeds, exploits. With the
coming of the Renaissance, satire tended to replace the epics of chivalry,
and in the sixteenth century the heroic 'geste' turned into 'jest'.
To
p. 32
. A critical discussion of both theories
can be found in Appendix I of
Insight and Outlook
.
To
p. 40
. The choice of the term 'matrix' is less
easy to explain. In an earlier version I used 'feeld' and 'framework',
but 'field' is too vague, and 'frame' too rigid. 'Matrix' is derived from
the Latin for womb and is figurative|y used for any pattern or mould in
which things are shaped and developed, or type is cast. Thus the exercise
of a habit or skill is 'moulded' by its matrix. In mathematics, matrices
are rectangular arrays of numbers capable of all sorts of magic; they can
be subjected to various transformations without losing their identity --
i.e. they are both 'flexible' and 'stable'. Also, matrices have a constant
attached to them, called their 'determinant', which remains unaffected
by any of these transformations. But the analogy between 'determinant'
and 'code' is extremely loose and in more than one respect misleading.
To
p. 43
. Congenitally blind patients, who acquire
vision after surgical operations at a mature age, have great difficulties
in recognizing patterns and faces, and in orienting themselves in
space. Cf. Senden (1932), quoted by Hebb (1949).
To
p. 44
. The dual concepts of matrices and codes
were designed with one eye on psychology, the other on physiology. Their
theoretical implications in this wider context are discussed in
Book Two
.
The reader versed in experimental psychology will have been reminded by
now of such old friends from the Würzburg School as
Aufgabe
,
Einstellung
,
Bewußtseinslage
; and of their Anglo-Saxon
relatives:
determining tendency
,
expectancy
,
task
,
schema
and
set
. He will probably also remember that
J. J. Gibson in a famous article (quoted by Humphrey, 1951, p. 105)
Listed some forty different meanings in which the word
set
was used. I hope to show that
matrices
and
codes
are
concepts at the same time more precise, and of more general validity,
than
Aufgaben
or
sets
.
II
LAUGHTER AND EMOTION
The sudden bisociation of an idea or event with two habitually
incompatible matrices will produce a comic effect, provided that the
narrative, the semantic pipeline, carries the right kind of emotional
tension. When the pipe is punctured, and our expectations are fooled,
the now redundant tension gushes out in laughter, or is spilled in the
gentler form of the sou-rire.
Aggression and Identification
Laughter, as the cliché has it, is 'liberating',
i.e. tension-relieving. Relief from stress is always pleasurable,
regardless whether it was caused by hunger, sex, anger, or anxiety. Under
ordinary circumstances, such relief is obtained by some purposeful
activity which is appropriate to the nature of the tension. When we laugh,
however, the pleasurable relief does not derive from a consummatory
act which satisfies some specific need. On the contrary: laughter
prevents the satisfaction of biological drives, it makes a man equally
incapable of killing or copulating; it deflates anger, apprehension,
and pride. The tension is not consummated -- it is frittered away in
an apparently purposeless reflex, in facial grimaces, accompanied by
over-exertion of the breathing mechanism and aimless gestures. To put
it the other way round: the sole function of this luxury reflex seems
to be the disposal of excitations which have become redundant, which
cannot be consummated in any purposeful manner.
But
why
has the excitation suddenly become 'redundant'; and why is it
discharged in laughter and not, say, in weeping -- which is an equally
'purposeless' activity? The answer to the second half of the question
seems obvious: the kind of excitation exploded in laughter has a different
quality or chemical composition, as it were, from the emotions which
overflow in tears. But the very obviousness of this answer is deceptive,
for the attempt to define this difference in 'quality and composition'
necessitates a new approach to the theory of human emotions.
At first sight there seehis to be a bewildering variety of moods involved
in different types of humour. The practical joke is frankly aggressive;
the lavatory jokes of children are scatological; blue jokes are sexual;
the Charles Addams type of cartoon and the 'sick' joke play on feelings
of horror and disgust; the satirist on righteous indignation. Moreover,
the same type of semantic pipeline can be made to carry different
types of fluid under varying degrees of pressure: for instance, 'they
haven't got a coat to turn' and 'I never aimed as high as that' are
both bisociations of metaphorical and direct meaning -- jokes of the
same logical pattern but with different emotional colouring. The more
sophisticated forms of humour evoke mixed, and sometimes contradictory,
feelings; but whatever the mixture, it must contain one ingredient whose
presence is indispensable: an impulse, however faint, of aggression or
apprehension. It may be manifested in the guise of malice, derision,
the veiled cruelty of condescension, or merely as an absence of
sympathy with the victim of the joke -- a 'momentary anaesthesia of the
heart', as Bergson put it. I propose to call this common ingredient the
'aggressive-defensive' or 'self-asserting' tendency -- the reasons for
choosing this clumsy term will be seen later on. In the subtler types of
humour this tendency is so faint and discreet that only careful analysis
will detect it, like the presence of salt in a well-prepared dish --
which, however, would be tasteless without it.
It is the aggressive element, the detached malice of the parodist, which
turns pathos into bathos, tragedy into comedy. It may be combined with
affection, as in friendly teasing; in civilized humour aggression is
sublimated and often unconscious. But in jokes which appeal to children
and primitives, cruelty and boastful self-assertion are much in evidence,
and the same is true of the historically earlier forms and theories of
the comic. 'As laughter emerges with man from the mists of antiquity
it seems to hold a dagger in its hand. There is enough brutal triumph,
enough contempt, enough striking down from superiority in the records of
antiquity and its estimates of laughter to presume that original laughter
may have been wholly animosity.' [1] In the Old Testament there are
(according to Mitchell [2]) twenty-nine references to laughter, out of
which thirteen are linked with scorn, derision, mocking, or contempt,
and only two are 'born out of a joyful and merry heart'. A survey among
America schoolchildren between the ages of eight and fifteen led to the
conclusion (which could hardly have surprised anybody) that 'mortification
or discomfort or hoaxing of others very readily caused laughter, while
a witty or funny remark often passed unnoticed'. [3]
Among the theories of laughter that have been proposed since the days of
Aristotle, the 'theory of degradation' appears as the most persistent. For
Aristotle himself laughter was closely related to ugliness and debasement;
for Cicero 'the province of the ridiculous . . . lies in a certain
baseness and deformity'; for Descartes laughter is a manifestation of joy
'mixed with surprise or hate or sometimes with both'; in Francis Bacon's
list of laughable objects, the first place is taken by 'deformity'. The
essence of the 'theory of degradation' is defined in Hobbes's
Leviathan
:
The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising fromBain, one of the founders of modern psychology, followed on the whole the
a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with
the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
same theory: 'Not in physical effects alone, but in everything where a
man can achieve a stroke of superiority, in surpassing or discomforting
a rival, is the disposition of laughter apparent.' [4]
For Bergson laughter is the corrective punishment inflicted by society
upon the unsocial individual: 'In laughter we always find an unavowed
intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.' [5]
Max Beerbohm found 'two elements in the public's humour: delight
in suffering, contempt for the unfamiliar'. McDougall believed that
'laughter has been evolved in the human race as an antidote to sympathy,
a protective reaction shielding us from the depressive influence of the
shortcomings of our fellow men.' [6]
Thus on this one point there is agreement among the theorists, ancient
and modern; and not only agreement but exaggeration. One has only to
think of Aristophanes or Calderon;
A Midsummer Night's Dream
or Chateaubriand's
Maximes et Pensées
, to realize that
the aggressive charge detonated in laughter need not be gunpowder;
a grain of Attic salt is enough to act as a catalyst. Furthermore,
we must remember that aggression and self-defence, rage and fear,
hostility and apprehension, are as pairs of twins in their psychology and
physiology. One of the typical situations in which laughter occurs is the
moment of the sudden cessation of danger, real or imaginary; and rarely is
the character of laughter as a discharge-mechanism for redundant tensions
more strikingly manifested than in the sudden change of expression on the
small child's face from anxious apprehension to the happy laugh of relief.
Whatever the composition of the emotional charge which a narrative
carries, it will produce a comic effect only if an aggressive-defensive
tendency, however sublimated, is present in it. You may be deeply moved
by a person's predicament, and yet unable to suppress a smile at its
ludicrous aspect; and the impression of the 'ludicrousness' of another
person's behaviour always implies an assertion -- conscious or unconscious
-- of your own superiority; you smile at his expense.
The emotions which dominate on the opposite side of the triptych do
not concern us as yet; but I must briefly mention them for the sake of
contrast. Listening to Mozart, watching a great actor's performance,
being in love or some other state of grace, may cause a welling up of
happy emotions which moisten the eye or overflow in tears. Compassion and
bereavement may have the same physical effect. The emotions of this class,
whether joyous or sad, include sympathy, identification, pity, admiration,
awe, and wonder. The common denominator of these heterogeneous emotions is
a feeling of participation, identification, or belonging; in other words,
the self is experienced as being a
part of a larger whole
, a higher
unity -- which may be Nature, God, Mankind, Universal Order, or the 'Anima
Mundi'; it may be an abstract idea, or a human bond with persons living,
dead, or imagined. I propose to call the common element in these emotions
the 'participatory' or 'self-transcending' tendencies. This is not meant
in a mystical sense (though mysticism certainly belongs to this class of
emotion); the term is merely intended to convey that in these emotional
states the need is felt to behave as a part of some real or imaginary
entity which transcends, as it were, the boundaries of the individual
self; whereas when governed by the self-assertive class of emotions the
ego is experienced as a self-contained whole and the ultimate value.
As a rule our emotions are complex mixtures in which both tendencies
participate. Thus the emotion called 'love' -- whether sexual or maternal
-- usually contains an aggressive or possessive, self-asserting component,
and an identificatory or self-transcending component. If emotions were
represented by different colours, then the two opposite tendencies would
appear as brightness values (black-white mixtures) superimposed on them.
The subject will be discussed in more detail later (Chapters XI-XV);
readers irritated by these repeated anticipatory excursions may find
some excuse for them in the consideration that the painful vivisection
of the comic, in which they are asked to participate, is not an end in
itself, but a means to uncover the pattern which unites the apparently
so heterogeneous creative activities in humour, art, and discovery.
The Inertia of Emotion
The first to make the suggestion that laughter is a discharge mechanism
for 'nervous energy' seems to have been Herbert Spencer. His essay
on the
Physiology of Laughter
(1860) starts with the proposition:
'Nervous energy always
tends
to beget muscular motion; and when it
rises to a certain intensity always does beget it. . . . Emotions and
sensations tend to generate bodily movements, and . . . the movements are
violent in proportion as the emotions or sensations are intense.' Hence,
he concludes, 'when consciousness is unawares transferred from great
things to small' the 'liberated nerve force' will expend itself along
the channels of least resistance, which are the muscular movements
of laughter.
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