“I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: ‘This could be interesting’.” – Paddy Lennox (2009)
“There was a man who entered a local paper’s pun contest.. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.” (Anon)
In his essay The Three Domains of Creativity, Arthur Koestler identifies three creative domains; artistic originality (the ‘ah!’ reaction) scientific discovery (the ‘aha!’ reaction) and comic inspiration (the ‘haha!’ reaction). They all have something profound in common with education in general; they are all about thinking new things.
The essence of creativity is bringing together two ideas that are not ordinarily combined. According to Koestler, the interaction causes us to ‘perceive the situation in two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference’. The joke-teller starts with a logical chain of events; the punchline cuts across the chain with a totally unexpected line. In each of the jokes above, we are suddenly forced to realise that the speaker has a common saying in his or her mind; and our minds are in turn delightfully stretched in the realisation. For me, I’m not sure if that’s ‘ha ha’ or ‘aha’; perhaps the difference is not so big after all. In any case, the pleasure from the insight leads me to remember that laughter should be a common feature in the education of our children.
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PS A TOK class was exploring this sometime ago, and I asked them to each bring a pun as an example. Here were the top 10:
- After a childhood of religious favour, I have become an atheist. I guess you can get too much of a God thing.
- I bought a ceiling fan the other day. Complete waste of money. He just stands there applauding and saying “Ooh, I love how smooth it is.”
- I for one, think puns with Roman Numerals are hilarious.
- My dog ate an entire string of Christmas lights but thankfully my vet removed them. He’s delighted.
- My friend the chemist moonlights as a policeman to make ends meet. They pay well – it’s the copper nitrate.
- My girlfriend just broke up with me for talking about video games too much. What a stupid thing to Fallout 4.
- Woke up with my hair sticking out at 90 degrees. It’s a right tangle.
- “A canapé” What a Scot says when he can’t afford a vol-au-vent.
- Saw the cast of Lord of The Rings dressed as Smurfs. They were screaming blue Mordor.
- There is a new amphetamine called 502, which is a bad gateway drug.
Reference
Koestler, A. (1981). The Three Domains of Creativity. In: Dutton, D., Krausz, M. (eds) The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht.
