Imagine someone walking down a busy street engrossed in their smartphone, completely oblivious to their surroundings. Suddenly, they walk straight into a lamppost. The immediate, almost reflexive response from onlookers is often laughter (assuming the person isn't seriously hurt).

According to Bergson, the humor in this situation arises from the mechanical behavior of the person—walking straight ahead without adapting to the environment—clashing with the living, dynamic nature of human movement that typically involves navigating obstacles. The person, engrossed in their phone, acts almost like a machine following a set program ("move straight ahead") without the adaptive, responsive qualities that characterize living beings. The lamppost collision abruptly highlights this mechanical behavior, making it comic.

The laughter that follows serves several functions. It's a social signal that points out the absurdity of becoming so absorbed in technology that one forgets to engage with the physical world. It also acts as a gentle reminder of our shared humanity; we are all capable of moments of absent-mindedness, but we're also adaptable, living beings, not machines.

One of the most important and often cited parts of Henri Bergson's essay "Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic" is his concept of "something mechanical encrusted on the living." Below are some relevant audio excerpts I have prepared, with the transcripts posted below:

In these clips, Bergson argues that laughter is a social and human phenomenon that arises when a person behaves in a mechanical, automatic, or rigid manner in a situation that calls for adaptability and human warmth. This rigidity, which is likened to the mechanical encrusted upon the living, becomes comic when it is observed by others. The essence of the comic, for Bergson, lies in this incongruity between the mechanical and the fluid nature of human life. Laughter serves as a corrective by highlighting and mocking this rigidity, encouraging social cohesion by reminding individuals of the importance of flexibility, empathy, and the human spirit.

"The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine."

This concept has been widely influential, informing various theories of humor beyond philosophy, including those in psychology, sociology, and literary criticism. It highlights Bergson's view of laughter as inherently social and linked to the collective human experience, serving not only to amuse but to enforce social norms and encourage behavioral flexibility.

But what about intellectual humor, or wit?

Bergson's concept of "something mechanical encrusted on the living" can indeed apply to forms of humor beyond just physical comedy, including wit. While Bergson's theory is often illustrated through examples of physical humor because they clearly demonstrate the contrast between mechanical rigidity and the fluidity expected of living beings, the underlying principle can also explain why verbal wit and certain types of intellectual humor are found to be funny.

In the case of wit, the "mechanical" can manifest as a rigid expectation or conventional pattern of thinking. When a witty remark or pun disrupts this pattern in an unexpected way, it creates a juxtaposition similar to the physical humor scenario. The pleasure and laughter arise from the surprise, the sudden shift from a conventional trajectory of thought to an unexpected conclusion.

For example, consider a situation where someone uses a pun. A pun works by taking a word with a known, expected meaning and suddenly shifting its use in a context that highlights an alternative meaning. This mental "leap" from one meaning to another breaks the listener's automatic, mechanical processing of language, revealing the fluid, playful possibilities of meaning that lie beyond the rigid conventions of language use.

Bergson might argue that wit, like physical comedy, exposes and mocks the mechanical in our thinking—our tendency to fall into habitual patterns of understanding—and celebrates the liveliness of thought that can move beyond these patterns. So, while wit operates in the realm of ideas rather than physical movements, it still embodies the tension between the mechanical and the living that Bergson sees as central to humor. Wit forces an intellectual adaptation in the moment, mirroring the adaptive response expected in physical situations, thus generating laughter as a recognition of our escape from mental rigidity.

"We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing."

When Bergson talks about someone giving the impression of being a thing, he's referring to moments when human behavior becomes automatic, predictable, or inappropriately repetitive—essentially, when people act in ways that lack the spontaneity, adaptability, and depth expected of human beings. This "thing-like" behavior can manifest in physical actions, but it can also appear in speech patterns, thought processes, and social interactions.

In the realm of wit and verbal humor, someone might give the impression of being a "thing" through their use of language or ideas that are overly formulaic, cliché, or devoid of original thought. For example, when a speaker relies heavily on clichés but then suddenly twists them in an unexpected way, the humor arises from the juxtaposition of the mechanical repetition of well-worn phrases against the living, creative spark of wit that subverts expectations.

What might Oscar Wilde say about all this?

Oscar Wilde, known for his razor-sharp wit and profound insights wrapped in humor, might engage with Bergson's definition with both appreciation and a characteristic twist of his own perspective. Wilde's wit often played precisely on the tension between the expected social conventions ("the mechanical") and the surprising turn of phrase or thought that revealed deeper truths about human nature and society ("the living").

Wilde might say that his wit does not merely expose the mechanical in human behavior but celebrates the agility of the human mind to transcend its own constraints. He might argue that wit, in its highest form, is not about reducing a person to a thing through ridicule but about elevating our understanding of the human condition to art.

Considering a quote like, "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it," Wilde might highlight the paradoxical nature of human existence—the seriousness with which we must sometimes regard the frivolous, and the frivolity with which we must sometimes treat the serious. His response to Bergson could emphasize wit as a mechanism not just for laughter but for deeper reflection on the human condition, a tool for dissecting societal norms while engaging with the complexities of life and identity.

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Transcript of the audio excerpts, with the full text available on The Project Gutenberg website.

LAUGHTER: AN ESSAY ON THE MEANING OF THE COMIC (excerpts) by HENRI BERGSON

CHAPTER I. THE COMIC IN GENERAL—THE COMIC ELEMENT IN FORMS AND MOVEMENTS—EXPANSIVE FORCE OF THE COMIC.

Part Five. Section 2. Our starting-point is again "something mechanical encrusted upon the living." Where did the comic come from in this case? It came from the fact that the living body became rigid, like a machine. Accordingly, it seemed to us that the living body ought to be the perfection of suppleness, the ever-alert activity of a principle always at work. But this activity would really belong to the soul rather than to the body. It would be the very flame of life, kindled within us by a higher principle and perceived through the body, as if through a glass. When we see only gracefulness and suppleness in the living body, it is because we disregard in it the elements of weight, of resistance, and, in a word, of matter; we forget its materiality and think only of its vitality, a vitality which we regard as derived from the very principle of intellectual and moral life,

Let us suppose, however, that our attention is drawn to this material side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is animated, the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture, a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul eager to rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have just seen, the garment was to the body itself—inert matter dumped down upon living energy.

The impression of the comic will be produced as soon as we have a clear apprehension of this putting the one on the other. And we shall experience it most strongly when we are shown the soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one hand, the moral personality with its intelligently varied energy, and, on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy.

The more paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more striking will be the result. But that is only a matter of degree, and the general law of these phenomena may be formulated as follows: ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR ATTENTION TO THE PHYSICAL IN A PERSON WHEN IT IS THE MORAL SIDE THAT IS CONCERNED.

…

Section 3. Let us then return, for the last time, to our central image: something mechanical encrusted on something living. Here, the living being under discussion was a human being, a person. A mechanical arrangement, on the other hand, is a thing. What, therefore, incited laughter was the momentary transformation of a person into a thing, if one considers the image from this standpoint. Let us then pass from the exact idea of a machine to the vaguer one of a thing in general. We shall have a fresh series of laughable images which will be obtained by taking a blurred impression, so to speak, of the outlines of the former and will bring us to this new law: WE LAUGH EVERY TIME A PERSON GIVES US THE IMPRESSION OF BEING A THING.