What are you laughing at?

The Roman writer Seneca once commented: “All things are cause either for laughter or weeping.” The 18th-century French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais echoed Seneca’s words by stating: “I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.” Both Seneca and Beaumarchais understood that laughing and crying are closely related emotional responses to some kind of outside stimulus. They knew that in life, as in drama, comedy and tragedy are never far apart. Both laughing and crying serve to release tension. Laughter, like weeping, is a reflex action rooted in the central nervous system and its related hormones. It is expressed in the contraction of certain facial muscles and in altered breathing patterns. The stimulus that brings forth laughter is called humour. To define laughter and humour in this way, however, is to leave unanswered two questions: firstly, why do people laugh; and secondly, just what is funny, or humorous? The questions are difficult to answer because emotions and the reasons for them are not easily analyzed.