The Ghost in the Machine
I do not mean to belittle the value of law-abiding routines. They lend coherence and stability to behaviour, and structured order to thought. But when the challenge exceeds a critical limit, adaptive routines are no longer sufficient. The world moves on and new facts arise, creating problems which cannot be solved within the conventional frames of reference, by applying to them the accepted rules of the game. Then the crisis is on, with its desperate search for a remedy, the unorthodox improvisation which will lead to the new synthesis -- the act of mental self-repair.
The Latin cogito comes from coagitare, to shake together. Bisociation means combining two hitherto unrelated cognitive matrices in such a way that a new level is added to the hierarchy, which contains the previously separate structures as its members. The motions of the tides were known to man from time immemorial. So were the motions of the moon. But the idea to relate the two, the idea that the tides were due to the attraction of the moon, occurred, as far as we know, for the first time to a German astronomer in the seventeenth century; and when Galileo read about it, he laughed it off as an occult fancy. Moral: the more familiar the previously unrelated structures are, the more striking the emergent synthesis, and the more obvious it looks in the driver's mirror of hindsight. The history of science is a history of marriages between ideas which were previously strangers to each other, and frequently comidered as incompatible. Lodestones -- magnets -- were known in antiquity as a curiosity of Nature. In the Middle Ages they were used for two purposes: as navigators' compasses and as a means to attract an estranged wife back to her husband. Equally well known were the curious properties of amber which, when rubbed, acquired the virtue of attracting flimsy objects. The Greek for amber is elektron, but the Greeks were not much interested in electricity; nor were the Middle Ages. For nearly two thousand years, electricity and magnetism were considered as separate phenomena, in no way related to each other. In 1820 Hans Christian Oersted discovered that an electric current flowing through a wire deflected a magnetic compass which happened to be lying on his table. At that moment the two contexts began to fuse into one: electro-magnetism, creating a kind of chain-reaction which is still continuing and gaining in momentum.
The AHA Reaction
From Pythagoras, who combined arithmetic and geometry, to Newton, who combined Galileo's studies of the motion of projectiles with Kepler's equations of planetary orbits, to Einstein, who unified energy and matter in a single sinister equation, the pattern is always the same. The creative act does not create something out of nothing, like the God of the Old Testament; it combines, reshuffles and relates already existing but hitherto separate ideas, facts, frames of perception, associative contexts. This act of cross-fertilisation -- or self-fertilisation within a single brain -- seems to be the essence of creativity, and to justify the term 'bisociation'.*
* Similar views have been put forward, among others, by the mathematician Henri Poincaré, who in an oft-quoted lecture explained discovery as the happy meeting of 'hooked atoms of thought' in the unconscious mind. According to Sir Frederick Bartlett, 'the most important features of original experimental thinking is the discovery of overlap . . . where formerly only isolation and difference were recognised'. [10] Jerome Bruner considers all forms of creativity as a result of 'combinatorial activity'. [11] McKellar talks of the 'fusion' of perceptions [12], Kubie of the 'discovery of unexpected connections between things' [13]; and so on, back to Goethe's 'connect, always connect'.
Take the example of Gutenberg, who invented the printing press (or at least invented it independently from others). His first idea was to cast letter-types like signet rings or seals. But how could he assemble thousands of little seals in such a way that they made an even imprint on paper? He struggled with the problem for years, until one day he went to a wine harvest in his native Rhineland, and presumably got drunk. He wrote in a letter: 'I watched the wine flowing, and going back from the effect to the cause, I studied the power of the wine press which nothing can resist . . .'. At that moment the penny dropped: seals and the wine press combined gave the letter press.
Gestalt psychologists have coined a word for that moment of truth, the flash of illumination, when bits of the puzzle suddenly click into place -- they call it the AHA experience. But this is not the only type of reaction which the bisociative click can produce. A quite different kind of response is aroused by telling a story like the following:
A Marquis at the court of Louis XV had unexpectedly returned from a journey and, on entering his wife's boudoir, found her in the arms of a bishop. After a moment's hesitation, the Marquis walked calmly to the window, leaned out and began going through the motions of blessing the people in the street. 'What are you doing?' cried the anguished wife. 'Monseigneur is performing my functions,' replied the nobleman, 'so I am performing his.'* * I have used this particular story in The Act of Creation and am using it again because of its neat pattern. Most anecdotes need lengthy explanations to make their logical structure clear.
Laughter may be called the HAHA reaction.* Let us briefly discuss first the logical, then the emotional, aspect of it.
* I am grateful to Dr. Brennig James for having suggested this term as a twin to the AHA reaction.
The HAHA Reaction
The Marquis' behaviour is both unexpected and perfectly logical -- but of a logic not usually applied to this type of situation. It is the logic of the division of labour, where the rule of the game is the quid pro quo, the give-and-take. But we expected, of course, that his reactions would be governed by a quite different canon, that of sexual morality. It is the interaction between these two mutually exclusive associative contexts which produces the comic effect. It compels us to perceive the situation at the same time in two self-cousistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference; it makes us function on two wave-lengths simultaneously. While this unusual condition lasts, the event is not, as is normally the case, perceived in a single frame of reference, but bisociated with two.
But this unusual condition does not last for long. The act of discovery leads to a lasting synthesis, a fusion of the two previously unrelated frames of reference; in the comic bisociation we have a collision between incompatible frames which for a brief moment cross each other's path. However, the difference is not absolute. Whether the frames are compatible or not, whether they will collide or merge, depends on subjective factors -- for after all, the colliding or merging takes place in the minds of the audience. In Kepler's mind the motions of the moon and the motions of the tides fused -- they became branches of the same causative hierarchy. But Galileo treated Kepler's theory literally as a joke -- he called it an 'occult fancy'. The history of science abounds with examples of discoveries greeted with howls of laughter because they seemed to be a marriage of incompatibles -- until the marriage bore fruit and the alleged incompatibility of the partners turned out to derive from prejudice. The humorist, on the other hand, deliberately chooses discordant codes of behaviour, or universes of discourse, to expose their hidden incongruities in the resulting clash. Comic discovery is paradox stated -- scientific discovery is paradox resolved.
Looked at from his own point of view, the Marquis' gesture was a truly original inspiration. If he had followed the conventional rules of the game, he would have had to beat up or kill the Bishop. But at the court of Louis XV assassinating a Monseigneur would have been considered, if not exactly a crime, still in very bad taste; it could not be done. To solve the problem, that is, to save his face and at the same time humiliate his opponent -- a second frame of reference, governed by different rules of the game, had to be brought into the situation and combined, bisociated, with the first. All original comic invention is a creative act, a malicious discovery.
Laughter and Emotion
The emphasis is on malicious, and this brings us from the logic of humour to the emotional factor in the HAHA reaction. When the expert story-teller tells an anecdote, he creates a certain tension which mounts as the narrative progresses. But it neve
r reaches its expected climax. The punch-line acts like a guillotine which cuts across the logical development of the situation; it debunks our dramatic expectations, the tension becomes redundant and is exploded in laughter. To put it differently, laughter disposes of emotional tension which has become pointless, is denied by reason, and has to be somehow worked off along physiological channels of least resistance.
If you look at the brutal merriment of the people in a tavern scene by Hogarth or Rawlinson, you realise at once that they are working off their surplus of adrenalin by contractions of the face muscles, slapping of thighs and explosive exhalations of breath from the half-closed glottis. The emotions worked off in laughter are aggression, sexual gloating, conscious or unconscious sadism -- all operating through the sympathico-adrenal system. However, when you look at a clever New Yorker cartoon, Homeric laughter yields to an amused and rarefied smile; the ample flow of adrenalin has been distilled into a grain of Attic salt. Take, for instance, that classic definition: 'What is a sadist? A person who is kind to a masochist . . .' The word 'witticism' is derived from 'wit' in its original sense of ingenuity; the two domains are continuous, without a sharp dividing line. As we move from the coarse towards the subtler forms of humour, the joke shades into epigram and riddle, the comic simile into the hidden analogy; and the emotions involved show a similar transition. The emotive voltage discharged in coarse laughter is aggression robbed of its purpose; the tension discharged in the AHA reaction is derived from an intellectual challenge. It snaps at the moment when the penny drops -- when we have solved the riddle hidden in the New Yorker cartoon, in a brain-teaser or in a scientific problem.
Let me repeat, the two domains of humour and discovery form a continuum. As we travel across it, from left to centre, so to speak, the emotional climate gradually changes from the malice of the jester to the detached objectivity of the sage. And if we now continue the journey in the same direction, we find equally gradual transitions into the third domain of creativity, that of the artist. The artist, too, hints rather than states, and poses riddles; and so we get a symmetrically reversed transition towards the other end of the spectrum, from highly intellectualised art forms towards the more sensual and emotive, ending in the thought-free beatitude of the mystic.
The AH Reaction
But how does one define the emotional climate of art? How does one classify the emotions which give rise to the experience of beauty? If you leaf through textbooks of experimental psychology, you won't find much of it. When Behaviourists use the word 'emotion', they nearly always refer to hunger, sex, rage and fear, and the related effects of the release of adrenalin. They have no explanations to offer for the curious reaction one experiences when listening to Mozart, or looking at the ocean, or reading for the first time John Donne's Holy Sonnets. Nor will you find in the textbooks a description of the physiological processes accompanying the reaction: moistening of the eyes, catching one's breath, followed by a kind of rapt tranquillity, the draining of all tensions. Let us call this the AH reaction -- and thus complete the trinity.
---------------------- HAHA! | AHA | AH . . . ----------------------
Laughter and weeping, the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, mark the extremes of a continuous spectrum; both are overflow reflexes, but in every other respect are physiological opposites. Laughter is mediated by the sympathico-adrenal branch of the autonomic nervous system, weeping by the parasympathetic branch; the first tends to galvanise the body into action, the second tends towards passivity and catharsis. Watch yourself breathing when you laugh: long deep intakes of air, followed by bursts of exhalatory puffs -- ha, ha, ha! In weeping, you do the opposite: short, gasping inspirations -- sobs -- are followed by long, sighing expirations -- a-a-h, aah . . .
In keeping with this, the emotions which overflow in the AH reaction are the direct opposites of those exploded in laughter. The latter belong to the adrenergic, aggressive-defensive type of emotions. In our theory, these are manifestations of the self-assertive tendency. Their opposites I shall call the self-transcending emotions, derived from the integrative tendency. They are epitomised in what Freud called the oceanic feeling: that expansion of awareness which one experiences on occasion in an empty cathedral when eternity is looking through the window of time, and in which the self seems to dissolve like a grain of salt in a lot of water.
Art and Emotion
The polarity between the integrative and self-assertive tendencies is, as we have seen, inherent in all hierarchic order, and manifested on every level, from embryonic development to international politics. The integrative tendency, which is our present concern, reflects the 'part-ness' ofa holon, its dependence on, and belonging to, a more complex whole. It is at work all along the line, from the physical symbiosis of organelles, through the aggregation of herd and flock, up to the cohesive forces in insect states and primate societies.
The single individual, considered as a whole, represents the apex of the organismic hierarchy, but at the same time he is a part, an elementary unit in the social hierarchy. The dichotomy is reflected in his emotional nature. His self-assertion as an autonomous, independent whole is expressed in ambition, competitiveness, aggressive-defensive behaviour, as the case may be. His integrative tendency reflects his dependence, as a part, on family, tribe, society. But -- and this is an essential but -- participation in a social group is not always sufficient to satisfy the individual's integrative potential; and to some people it provides no satisfaction at all. Every man is a holon, and feels the need to be a part of something that transcends the narrow boundaries of the self; that need is at the root of the 'self-transcending' emotions. It may be fullfiled by social identification -- to which we shall return in Part Three. But that higher entity to which the individual craves to surrender his identity may also be God, Nature or Art; the magic of form, the ocean of sound, or the mathematical symbols of convergence in the infinite. This is the type of emotion which enters into the AH reaction.
The self-transcending emotions show a wide range of variety. They may be joyous or sad, tragic or lyrical; their common denominator, to repeat this once more, is the feeling of integrative participation in an experience which transcends the boundaries of the self.
Self-assertive emotions tend towards bodily activity; the self-transcending emotions are essentially passive and cathartic. The former are manifested in aggressive-defensive behaviour; the latter in empathy, rapport and identification, admiration and wonder. The shedding of tears is an outlet for an excess of the self-transcending emotions, as laughter is for the self-assertive emotions. In laughter, tension is suddenly exploded, emotion debunked; in weeping it is gradually drained away, without breaking the continuity of mood; emotion and thought remain united. The self-transcending emotions do not tend towards action, but towards quiescence. Respiration and pulse rate are slowed down; 'entrancement' is a step towards the trance-like states induced by contemplative mystics; the emotion is of a quality that cannot be consummated by any specific voluntary act. You cannot take the mountain panorama home with you; you cannot merge with the infinite by any exertion of the body; to be 'overwhelmed' by awe and wonder, 'enraptured' by a smile, 'entranced' by beauty -- each of these words expresses passive surrender. The surplus of emotion cannot be worked off by any purposeful muscular activity, it can only be consummated in internal -- visceral and glandular -- processes.
The various causes which may lead to an overflow of tears -- aesthetic or religious rapture, bereavement, joy, sympathy, self-pity -- all have this basic element in common: a craving to transcend the island boundaries of the individual, to enter into a symbiotic communion with a human being, living or dead, or some higher entity, real or imaginary, of which the self is felt to be a part.
The self-transcending emotions are the step-children of psychology, but they are as basic, and as firmly rooted in biology as their opposites. Freud and Piaget, among others, have emphasised the fact that the very young child does not differentiate between ego an
d environment. The nourishing breast appears to it as a more intimate possession than the toes of its own body. It is aware of events, but not of itself as a separate entity. It lives in a state of mental symbiosis with the outer world, a continuation of the biological symbiosis in the womb. The universe is focussed on the self, and the self is the universe -- a condition which Piaget called 'protoplasmic' or 'symbiotic' consciousness.* It may be likened to a fluid universe, traversed by the tidal rise and fall of physiological needs, and by minor storms which come and go without leaving solid traces. Gradually the floods recede, and the first islands of objective reality emerge; the contours grow firmer and sharper; the islands grow into continents, the dry territories of reality are mapped out; but side by side with it the liquid world coexists, surrounding it, interpenetrating it by canals and inland lakes, the vestigial relics of the erstwhile symbiotic communion -- the origin of that 'oceanic feeling' which the artist and the mystic strive to recapture on a higher level of development, at a higher turn of the spiral.