These days, the growth of knowledge is so extraordinary that one person, or even one university, can hardly keep up. Even one area of knowledge can split into thousands of specializations (and more with every doctoral dissertation).
So how can person be a philosopher today? In the era of specialization, the philosopher must be the generalist, crossing all disciplines to coordinate and synthesize the specialized knowledge, using both analysis and imagination to create something approaching understanding. If language must be created to support that understanding, it is the philosopher’s job to apply the language both consistently and critically.
That is the approach I am taking with this book. I am a philosopher, not a scientist. I am proposing, suggesting, elucidating, not proving. That’s one of the good things about being a philosopher. Internal consistency of thought and external consistency with evidence are all that are required. Or you can think of me as a theoretical comedian.
This book proposes a philosophy of comedy. We’ll examine various categories of knowledge, view the phenomenon of comedy from different angles, put all those viewpoints together, and try to see not just what comedy is, but also what it can be.
Seriously.
Excerpted from Funny Thing Is: A Guide to Understanding Comedy
