And this is true no matter what approach you take to studying the mind. Strictly biological, psychological, philosophical, spiritual: each discipline, when looking at the brain itself, is more or less clueless.
Which is not to say remarkable research hasn’t been done. Neuroscience is a very hot subject right now, precisely because of all the fascinating discoveries being made. Psychology has fascinated us for centuries, and since Freud it’s been a rich topic for discussion. And the only thing older than philosophy is religion.
But even Plato figured out that the all he could be certain of was that he didn’t know anything. A few thousand years later, Descartes updated that to knowing he exists... and that's about it. There’s an entire philosophy based on separating the brain itself from the mind. As for anatomy, some of those ancient Greeks did think the brain was the center of thought, until Aristotle came along and switched that job to the heart.
The point is, all of this noodling is being done with the very noodle being noodled. This is ironic, and therefore hilarious. But wait, there’s more: there’s a word for the brain study of laughter: gelotology. Go head, laugh at that. Laugh at Jello-tology.
And of course, what little we know about laughter and brain is… very little. We know that laughter is a distributed emotional responses, moving through several parts of the brain. We know it has social uses, as well as therapeutic uses. But next to sleep, laughter maybe one of the biggest brain mysteries yet.
The good news is: you don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car. You don’t have to know how the brain works to have a brilliant mind, and you don’t have to know why a joke is funny to know that it’s funny.
Indeed, sometimes nothing kills a joke like explaining it.
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