One winter morning in 1931, at a cemetery in London, Willy Anderson solemnly bowed his head and watched his mother's casket descend into the earth. Suddenly, and to the collective horror of those in attendance, he began to laugh. The outburst was muffled at first, as Anderson desperately covered his mouth, but it soon grew so intense that he had to leave the grave. Hours later, when Anderson still couldn't contain himself, his family took him to a hospital emergency room. The attending doctor checked his pupils and vital signs and could find nothing wrong but recommended that the patient be kept for observation. Two days later, Anderson died. The postmortem revealed that a large aneurysm in an artery at the base of his brain had ruptured, compressing part of his hypothalamus and other adjacent structures.
The science of comedy is rooted in such tragedies. For centuries, thinkers from Aristotle ...
