Physiology or Philosophy?

Although I enjoyed our excerpt from Herbert Spencer, I would assume a lot of my classmates did not. It reads like a physiology lecture, and being a science geek, this was right up my alley. Spencer describes extra neural excitement and the way it needs to find a path out of the body. He uses the example of exercise and I think it's a great one. When you're nervous or excited, you can't sit still. You often can't sleep either. But if you exercise, say run or play basketball. You work out that extra energy and you can finally focus. Personally I experience this a lot. When I don't exercise regularly I don't sleep. It's as simple as that. Spencer puts laughter in the same category. It's simply a physical channel for excess neural stimulation.

So why don't we laugh all the time? He goes on to explain that laughter only occurs in a descending order. If the overstimulating event is not "inferior" to the preceding stimuli, laughter won't be the channel that the excess takes. I think of this as a necessary let down. If a stimulus creates more tension and escalates the excess you don't laugh. For instance if someone is ill and in the hospital, you may have an excess of stimulation. If something silly happens you might laugh and release it. Perhaps your loved one starts to come around and makes a joke. But if your loved one dies. That next step is a further escalating step and doesn't elicit a laugh but a different release, probably tears.

I'm not sure how this ties in with Freud but Spencer makes a lot of sense to me.