All Humour is Caused by Just Eight Patterns

Is there humour in the picture of the woman kissing the monkey dressed as a man?

20 Mar 2009 10:00 Africa/Lagos

All Humour is Caused by Just Eight Patterns

CARLISLE, England, March 20/PRNewswire/ -- Evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke has today published details of eight patterns he claims to be the basis of all the humour that has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste.


"All it takes is the surprise recognition of one of these patterns to trigger humour," says Alastair Clarke. "Sometimes a single pattern is the cause but just as often combinations of two or three are recognized simultaneously. Theoretically there is no limit to the number of patterns that may combine to make a person laugh."


Clarke has stated before that humour is based on the surprise recognition of patterns but this is the first time he has narrowed them down to eight specific types.


"Some of the patterns are quite simple and easy to understand. The most basic is what we call positive repetition, which just means that something is repeated in a similar form with the same purpose. The repeated item can be anything - an action, an entity, or a property.


"Then there's opposition, in which something is turned against itself. You might think of this as seeing a reflection in a river or turning an arrow back to point in the other direction, creating a pattern of symmetry.


"Another is what we call 'scale,' where we take something and repeat it in a different size. The item remains the same but the scale it's on changes, which is a common way to form a visual pattern.


"Unfortunately not all the patterns are quite so intuitive. Completion, qualitative recontextualization, translation, division and applicative recontextualization make up the remaining five.


"While it may seem bizarre to some, these few patterns are the real stimulus that makes us laugh, regardless of the content of the sit com we're watching or the funny story we're being told.


"They've also played a vitally important role in the evolution of the ingenuity of the human race. Their unconscious recognition has enabled humans to develop an intellect capable of analysis and invention on an unprecedented scale."


Clarke's findings are published today in a book entitled The Eight Patterns Of Humour, part of a series based on his Pattern Recognition Theory. A free eBook is available at http://www.pyrrhichouse.co.uk/eightpatterns for a period of 30 days.


"The book describes the eight patterns in detail and then goes on to explain precisely what people find amusing in more than a hundred different types of humour, demonstrating the unparalleled universality of the theory."


Clarke's research is based on the observation of many thousands of instances of humour. The analysis of ten thousand of these is to be made freely available on the internet as The Humour Ten Thousand during 2009. For more information visit http://www.pyrrhichouse.co.uk/research.


http://www.pyrrhichouse.co.uk


Notes to editors:


Alastair Clarke is an evolutionary theorist living in Cumbria, United Kingdom. He was educated at Oxford and London universities. http://www.pyrrhichouse.co.uk/alastairclarke


Alastair Clarke is available for interview.


Source: Pyrrhic House

Contact: Nicola Hern t: +44(0)7980-098652, e: nicola@herncommunications.co.uk