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Evolutionary origins of laughter

William Dembski
May 3, 2006
Intelligent Design
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Somebody, anybody, please put this theory out of its misery.

Evolutionary biologists have traced the origins of laughter back 4m years to pre-humans slipping and stumbling in their first faltering attempts to walk on two legs.

According to the theory, when they saw a member of their group lose his footing they would laugh as a sign to each other that something was amiss, but nothing too serious.

The theory could explain why, to this day, the ungainly walk remains a staple element of slapstick humour from John Cleese’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” to Rowan Atkinson’s accident-prone Mr Bean. . . .

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2157946_1,00.html

Comments
What is an Evolutionist Painter like ? An evolutionist painter is one who tries every possible combination of brush strokes on his canvases with his eyes CLOSED - and expects he will come up with a Van Gogh when he reaches 70.tomc
January 30, 2007
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I hope one day these guys will care to study the Evolutionary Origins of Stupidity. (It wont take lots of study! I mean they can just take a look in a mirror!)Farshad
May 9, 2006
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Why wouldn't an intelligent designer laugh if, when he drove down the street in his irreducibly complex car, people wondered if someone designed it and for what reason? Last night I dreamed about mufflers all night, woke up exhausted.Zero
May 5, 2006
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It is proof that even biologists smoke weed.Smidlee
May 5, 2006
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This is asinine, to be sure, but there are so many more examples that are not so asinine on the surface but are every bit as much untestable guessing as this. For instance, the idea that the reason male chimps (maybe it was bonobos, don't remember) mate with all the females they can get ahold of is because that makes them less likely to kill the babies, since they don't know who fathered what baby. I saw this asserted with supreme confidence in a NY Times article a while back. This presupposes that A. chimps know where babies come from and B. they wouldn't hesitate to kill a baby that they knew wasn't theirs yet they would hesitate otherwise. How does anyone know that? Can we know that? What would be the test? Even if you grant that RM+NS can and did do everything, this is still guesswork! Any scientific offering based on guesswork should be every bit as laughable :^) as this one, but why do people buy this stuff so often? Many think that poor education is behind the popular rejection of darwinism, yet it doesn't take much logical acumen to be able to see right through these things as guesses/stories. Amazing!landru
May 5, 2006
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Hey :) How many Darwinians does it take to tell a good joke? I guess it takes at least a publisher of a peer reviewed journal! @LucID thanks for the humor, it certainly made my day and @Gods Ipod: "Humerous" Muhahahahahaha. Hey think about it! Maybe this article is just a big joke?!?! Damn I think I just hit my funny bone. So I am going to giggle away today at work. Evolution muhahaha, funny theory it is, muhahaha. Got to give em one thing, its good for great comedy. Now that I think about it, maybe they can trace back where the first caricature evolved. I wonder if it depicted a guy with a turban falling to the ground. Maybe there are any cave drawings that show any funny pictures. "Language appeared only 2m years after the first laugh" I guess cause the first laughers were laughing so hard, that they couldn't speak for 2 Million years. Finally someone asked after 2 Million years what was so damn funny. Nobody could remember that they were actually laughing about that big Mamoth sitting on Uguhmagugu.tb
May 5, 2006
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"Evolution isn’t seen after the fact. It’s presumed after the fact. Big difference." -ds Fair enough, ds. It isn't seen at all; what is observed is only the signature of the hypothesized process. Although 'presumed' is a loaded word. "Inferred" would be kinder. Kinder still would be to rework the scenario... E.T. is generative of hypotheses concerning what will be observed should we examine, in the future, some previously unobserved natural data. In this sense E.T. can be put to the test without being presumed. Many such ET generated hypotheses have failed. Many more have succeeded. Because of this scientists have joined the evolutionary fold in large numbers over the years. That is how I understand the present situation.great_ape
May 4, 2006
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Okay, I shouldn't comment without looking at the scientific publication itself, but from the popular write-up, this study/theory sounds asinine. This is just the sort of thing that gives evolutionary science a bad name. Speculating about nonsense that can't be verified when there are legitimate biological questions out there that are empirically tractable. Shameful.

Mats,
Give us poor biologists a break. Because the very nature of evolution as commonly understood, you'll never *see* anything evolving today or over any other small unit of time. Evolution is only *seen* after the fact. Since darwinism is nonteleological, there is never any notion of a *target* to evolve to. So you can't observe a south american rodent and see that's it's evolving to an Agahboo. This is no Agahboo yet to compare it to. I am continually baffled by this "we don't see anything evolving today" argument. There's nothing in evolutionary theory that would lead one to expect such a thing.

Evolution isn't seen after the fact. It's presumed after the fact. Big difference. -ds great_ape
May 4, 2006
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“Does the ID side have an answer to the question “Why do we laugh?”” I think this needs a more gracious answer. ID is not intended as a drop-in replacement for mainstream evolutionary theory, seeking to provide alternative answers for every question mainstream evolutionary theory attempts to answer. ID and Darwinian evolution are competing theories, but not in the sense that, say, the lone-gunman theory and the second-gunman theory are competing theories for the Kennedy assassination. ID does not seek to throw away everything that has been learned from or claimed by evolutionary theory, but it does seek to point out the (many) cases where such work stands on the presupposition that random mutation and natural selection must explain everything.landru
May 4, 2006
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russ@12 Ahh, that is the evidence we needed in order to finally understand that all evolution happened prior to man's arrival. No wonder that we don't see anything evolving these days!Mats
May 4, 2006
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“Evolutionary biologists have traced the origins of laughter back 4m years to pre-humans slipping and stumbling...” How did they “trace” the origins of laughter back four million years? Note the attempt to mislead. There is no way they could have “traced” any such thing by any method. Once again, wild speculation is presented as fact in the “science” of evolutionary biology. This is science and ID is not?GilDodgen
May 4, 2006
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Theories like this one are gift wrapped presents to the ID community. Surely a Dawkins or a Dennet must cringe when they read such goofy stuff. In order to continue the viability of the Darwinian culture, you'd think there would be some sort of selective mechanism within the culture to eliminate those who present these wack-ball, just-so stories. Stu Harris www.theidbookstore.comStuartHarris
May 4, 2006
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“Does the ID side have an answer to the question “Why do we laugh?”” yes, because its just too damn funny to see someone fall! As Mel Brooks says (somewhat of a paraphrase), "if I cut my finger, that is tragic, if I fall off a ladder and then down a manhole, and break my neck, now, thats comedy!"ajl
May 4, 2006
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If ID did want to take a stab at the question of why we laugh (which, as someone mentioned, doesn't seem to be particularly relevant to ID proper anyway), it certainly wouldn't be constrained by the requirement of silly functional advantages and selectable functions that hamper evolutionary explanations.ultimate175
May 4, 2006
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Time for me to put a more serious tone on this trend, since you fundies know nothing about science *g* Here is a good question: What is the evolutionary history of winking?Mats
May 4, 2006
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"Does the ID side have an answer to the question “Why do we laugh?”" You mean like: "Here we have the bacterial flagelum. It have all the hallmarks of design, is irreducible complex and we know it couldn't came about through random mutation + natural selection. Thus, the best inference is that it was designed. Now, we laugh because... I beg your pardon?" ID is about empirical design detection, it's a scientific tool, nothing more, nothing less. “Why do we laugh?” is not a concern to the ID side. You could certainly take the ID ball and run with it and try to come up with an explanation to why do we laugh, but that would not be ID anymore. But if you think about it, not even the darwinists answered the question “Why do we laugh?”. They just assumed their materialistic philosophy, applied it, and concocted another just-so story that fit within their worldview - self-serving as usual.Marcos
May 4, 2006
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Does the ID side have an answer to the question “Why do we laugh?”

Does the Darwinian side? I mean, something beyond hand-waving bedtime stories like this one?

I've got a wild and extravagant story about the origin of laughter: A designing intelligence pre-programmed in the capacity for laughter at the quantum level. It was programmed to execute immediately upon the "emergence" of the species. The designer did this as a means for us to enjoy our lives and friendships more and to build stronger bonds in our communities. It was also put in place to help us deal with stress. Especially when trying to get thru to those who are pushing 19th century materialistic philosophy as science.

Scott
May 4, 2006
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It's a well known fact that Monty Python descended from the 3 Stooges with substantial modification.Scott
May 4, 2006
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Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to keep evolutionary theory around for the laughs. Well, we got the Sunday Times saying it's the inspiration for Monty Python so an objective beneficial use for it has been found. I betcha they can trace it to the Three Stooges too. Why is getting hit in the face with a pie funny? The Stooges were just trying to warn the society lady that a flying object was approching!!tribune7
May 4, 2006
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Speaking of evolution stories without solid evidence, it seems that Darwin's finches stubbornly persist in their non-evolution. Human encroachment is providing the figleaf for this embarassing (non)development: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10380051russ
May 4, 2006
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I suspect journalists are constantly looking for an opportunity to plug their cosmology to the masses: 'ONCE AGAIN science has confirmed my belief system'.bevets
May 4, 2006
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Was that a jaw bone he slipped on, or a humerus? Sorry... :PGods iPod
May 4, 2006
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I would have loved to be around when Matthew Gervais presented his study to his supervisor and to hear the raucous laughter when he initially read it and then asked for the REAL research paper. Then the subsequent stare of dumbstruck disbelief when his supervisor realised that this was the REAL paper and he would have to publish this utter #$%@ in a peer reviewed journal. Finally the attempt to pass it off as an authentic study amoung his supervisors collegues and justification for a PhD.lucID
May 4, 2006
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The reaction from www.creationsafari.com on this particular topic is quite funny. Especially the cartoon.

[i]How can this be? Humor and happiness has no intrinsic meaning in Darwinian thinking. It’s all about selfishness and survival (cartoon: http://www.comics.com/comics/franknernest/archive/franknernest-20060430.html).[/i]

Avater
May 4, 2006
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And this is where your hard earned tax dollars go??? To monkeys in lab coats hypothesyzing about the origin of laughter??? "Essentially, the suggestion is that slapstick and humour evolved from that time,” said Matthew Gervais, an American evolutionary biologist who led the study." Questions: How long did this study take?? What data did they use?? How much funding did it involve?? How did they come to these conclusions?? Answers: After wasting 6 months and $3million on crack-cocaine and Monty Python screenings at the 'research centre' Matthew Gervais and his team awoke from their crack-induced stupor to the harsh reality that they were due in 30 mins to hand in a research paper on evolutionary changes in homonoid populations. They began frantically rushing around screaming at each other as the gravity of possible 'loss-of-funding' due to 'no-research-paper' set in. When all of a sudden in the amidst of the stricken panic, Matthew Gervais slipped on a jaw-bone left lying around from a recent anthropological dig and crashed to the floor. The sudden erruption of laughter from his stoned collegues sparked a moment of genius... ....and thus ladies and gentlemen is how we found humour developing in pre-humans....lucID
May 3, 2006
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Oh geez... That's the prb w/ this evolution everything has to be evolved even Mr. Bean's humor. Btw, in my med school anatomy course we learned about how amazingly specified and complex gait (walking)is. So many muscles, bones, tendons etc have to work in coordination and a lot of them are actually doing "the opposite" of what you normally think they do, not to mention the cerebellar and cortical tracts that perfectly coordinate it. 4 million years for about 10 gagillion mutations and for each of those mutations to be selected until the point every single one of us has the tract nah...jpark320
May 3, 2006
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At least now we know the origin of the banana peel in the classic pratfall.Charlie
May 3, 2006
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Oh no, this is great, it's EXACTLY the sort of revelation of the folly of evolutionary thinking that the general public needs. I wonder how much longer it will take to evolve common sense?Gods iPod
May 3, 2006
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So what is a good answer to the question "Why do we laugh?" (I'd especially like to know why people laugh at the Marx brothers, but maybe that's doomed to be one of the great unanswerables.)Kipli
May 3, 2006
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Maybe you're right. Maybe we need to keep evolutionary theory around for the laughs.William Dembski
May 3, 2006
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