What Holds Bugs Bunny Up When He Runs Off The Cliff?

Animated cartoons of the 'Bugs Bunny' variety often feature the familiar picture of a figure running off a cliff; and continuing in mid-air, as if it were still on terra-firma. Only when the figure looks down does it realise its lack of support. Frantically, it tries to run faster, perhaps even turning to regain the safety of the land it has left behind. But it is too late. The figure plummets to the ground below.

Now, although the cartoon depiction of a figure running through a landscape is compatible with the laws of physics, the notion that it might continue its progress across an empty space is not. Thin air provides neither support nor purchase for this kind of continued movement. So what gives the still running figure its lift?

 A Classic Cartoon Cut

The short answer is that it is the human imagination which is now supporting and propelling the figure across the void. It is the creative force of the humorous imagination that has run the figure off the edge of physical space, and continued its progress in a line with human, rather than natural, logic. For it is clear to all of us that, in objective terms, this scene constitutes a radical denial of the physical laws of the universe.

It is only in the mental landscape of our imagination that denials of such force can be made with (what is effectively) the single stroke of a cartoonists pen. But what justifies such an attack?

What allows the cartoonist to suspend a figure in mid-air like this? Yes, it is for the sake of humour. But are there rules to the logic of humour just as there are rules to the logic of the physical universe? Or does literally anything go?

Well, it turns out that, just as there are rules to the patterns of force in physical space, there are rules to the patterns of meaning in our heads. And the cartoonist must keep within these rules, or his work will lose credibility. So what kind of rules are we talking about? What guides our thinking in a place where normal logic is suspended? To answer this question, let's start by looking at what happens to the cartoon figure just prior to its return to physical space.

Notice that although our cartoon figure has moved into an imaginary world when it runs off the cliff edge, it only stays ‘in a state of suspense’ for a matter of seconds. As soon as it looks down, it panics, and is claimed by gravity. That is, the resumption of physical laws is caused by a change in the mental state of the cartoon character itself. The figure that hesitates, and falls, meets with an intuitively-accepted principle of the imagination, which is that both the worlds of physics and the imagination are equally real, and that both may affect the other according to their own inalienable logic. Only believe that you can fly, and you will. Only have faith, and you will transcend physical reality (but don't look down).

So the idea that a rabbit can run off a cliff, and then keep going without support, seems to fit in with our belief in the power of thought. What the cartoonist does is to cleverly remind us of this belief by showing us the 'before and after' of the figures perception of its condition - it assumes it is supported, and therefore it is, but then that belief is destroyed by looking down, and it falls. Which ensures that overall, credibility is maintained - because physics, as always, gets the last word.

Now let us imagine how the cartoonist could have got things wrong. That is, what could the figure running off the cliff do that would actually go against the logic of the imagination, thus losing that all-important credibility? Or to put it another way, how could the cartoon work badly and fail, so irritating us?

For example, what if the rabbit runs off the cliff in a straight line, but then we upset the balance of the two opposing forces? So, instead of staying within the balance set by the pull of gravity on one side, and the lift afforded by its belief that it is still on terra-firma on the other, it starts to move upwards? (Or, for that matter, downwards) Almost as if the Vertical Hold dial on a tv had been poorly adjusted. How would we react to that?

Certainly it would be confusing. For no obvious reason, the pull of gravity has been turned into a push upwards (or, again for no clear reason, has been reduced to make the fall slower). So, instead of a clean switch from the logic of physics to the logic of the imagination, and then back again, triggered by changes in the perception of the runner, we find that another factor has entered the arena. And this factor muddies the water, because it offers no reason for being there. Which makes it into that unsatisfying thing: a twist without an accompanying justification.

This brings us to the key problem of ‘legitimacy’ in the logic of meanng. For example, in humour, it is not enough just to twist the strings of reality away from their normal state. The ‘twist’ has to be secured with a form of justification - that from here on I will call the ‘legit’. For example, with Bugs Bunny, you can’t impose changes on the physical reality of a cliff fall without providing some form of legitimacy (usually of a kind rooted in the human condition). After all, the landscape of the imagination is not a place where just anything goes – it has its own logic and rules.

Let’s take this further, and see if we can find a justification that will give this modified version of the mid-air runner some substance. Probably the quickest way would be to base it on the principle already in use in the Bug Bunny paradigm: Mind over Matter. For example, if the runner starts to fall as it comes off the cliff, but does so in slow motion, then we might link this to an increased rate of running on the part of the figure as it feels its downward decline. Now does this mean we bring the running figure down to earth gently in this case? No. It loses the battle with gravity a second later, and falls to the bottom with greater than usual force, as if gravity is getting its own back, punishing the runner for its defiance of physical laws – another bit of human logic that can account for a dramatic crashing into the ground, and one that is easy to understand.

Indeed, it is worth pointing out that in many of the animations that use the original mid-air runner twist, the figure always does more than just fall when it falls. It plummets. As if the force of gravity had built up during its own suspension, and was now reasserting itself with many times its normal force. And when the figure finally hits the ground, it does so with a thud the size of an earth tremor; getting up a moment later as if nothing had happened. Gravity, it seems, is in the service of the imagination at every step, and can be as easily nullified at the end of the fall as it can at the start.

To conclude, the example of the mid-air runner is a classic illustration of the nature of this landscape of the imagination because it shows the play between the laws of the physical universe, and the logic of meaning. It reveals the creative freedom of the human mind in a scale of conjecture that reaches beyond the constraints of normal reality, and yet at the same time reaffirms the objective loyalty of the imagination by reasserting these constraints a moment later.

Indeed, it is in this tendency of the human imagination to reach beyond the reality of physical space that we begin to see its real and fundamental character. In fact, it is precisely this power to reach beyond normal reality that has caused its emergence from physical space in the first place. And in order to appreciate this critically important point, our next step in describing the nature of the imagination must take a step backwards in time.

How Does The Landscape Of The Imagination Fit Into Normal Reality?

There seem to be three basic levels of reality evident on planet Earth. For example, we can look at Bugs Bunny falling as a Physical object, with a given mass and velocity, or as a Life form, with an increased heart rate and adrenaline output, or as a Semantic titbit from the realms of humour. Three levels: Physical, Living and Meaning, (or as I sometimes like to think, Non Living, Living, and Really Living). And it is no surprise to see that this division is reflected in the way the Sciences themselves are divided. So the Physical Sciences are made up of Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Climatology and Astronomy; the Life Sciences are made up of Botany, Zoology and Medicine; and then there are the Social Sciences.... which have not yet come of age with the other two, but which include such subjects as Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology.

Now let's look at this tripartite division in another, more dramatic way - as the Three Ages of Planet Earth. I have in mind three great tablets of stone, standing at the entrance to three great galleries that together comprise the definitive Science Museum for this planet.

And inscribed on these 3 tablets, we see the following 3 inscriptions:

The First Age of the planet began around four and a half billion years ago. An age of alien and desolate beauty, it was the exclusive arena of the primal forces of Nature. A world of liquid rock and solid seas, bathed in fire, and encrusted in cold. A place where huge eruptions and upheavals were separated by vast periods where time stood still, with only the slow grind of geological and chemical process to mark the passing of the millenia. A theatre of war between the three states of matter, where huge seas crashed against gigantic land masses, each expanding to the loss of the other in a titanic series of collapse and renewal. For this was the birth of a planet and The Age Of The Elements, and the only unifying forces were the pull of gravity and the forces of molecular attraction.

The Second Age of the planet began around three and a half billion years ago. An epoch of global chemistry had pushed a range of simple replicators further and further up the scale of size, number and complexity to create an entirely new phenomenon – Life on Earth. Pushed to a point where these teeming billions had actually taken on a defining role in their own evolution - by creating a brand new environment in which they themselves had become the shaper of further generations. For a chain of life had wrapped its DNA around the planet, charging the atmosphere with its unearthly cries, and the myriad spores of its own fecundity. To create a web of beings catching sunlight - and each other - in an endless stream of transcription and phosphorylation. For this was The Age Of The Replicators, and it was these beings, sprouting green, with sap rising, and hatching brown, with blood spinning, eking out an existence in the pitifully thin zone between crust and void, that were to paint a wholly new reality on the surface of planet Earth.

The Third Age of the planet began around two million years ago - with the sound of laughter. Many times, intelligence had flickered, but this time it caught fire, and exploded into the conscious life of a new and powerful entity, the mind. And through its principal agent, the imagination, the mind came to challenge the strict logic that had, up to now, ruled the animal kingdom. For animals stick faithfully to the sensory present, and the genetic past, but the imagination takes this ‘animal grammar’ forward into the future, and into the ‘what might be’ of the subjunctive tense. Taking it to a dangerous place, where the old certainties are replaced by new and risky concerns about what is possible, and what could be. But the imagination also unleashes a creative force of great power. For by asking what could and might be, a whole vast new reality can emerge. A world of meaning, expressed in novel forms and constructions, where rich information and energy flows vie with bright new units of speed and transformation to create a habitat never before seen on planet Earth. A veritable reef of polymer, concrete, wood, steel and glass within which, as in some fantastic lagoon, weaves and darts a teeming rainbow of semantic forms: stories, games, laws, traditions, ideals, fashions, songs, jokes, styles, codes and cosmologies. Every one a product of this fundamentally creative force: the new super-power of shared intelligence. For this is the Age of Meaning, and already its principal agent, the human imagination, is reaching out towards the stars.

Well, that was fun. And now we have three dramatic declarations about the different levels of reality to be found here on planet Earth. But take note: although this may be fun, it is not half as much fun as it is fundamental. Meaning that this is a base triplet that really is a base triplet, as we shall see once we start tracking through the logic of humour. Because the primary distinction between the three realities is very much more than just an administrative convenience that divides up the sciences. Rather, it is as fundamental to the creation of meaning as the original triplet of organic bases is to the building of DNA. A bold claim, and one that I hope will gradually become both clearer and more justifiable the more this website develops… But for now, we should just say a little more about what this triplet represents in terms of Physical, Genetic and Social Space.

Physical space' is what we see when we gaze up at the night sky, experience an earthquake, or model the atomic nature of matter. The true scale of this domain is as vast, and as small, as reality gets. Within this space/time continuum, the particular identity of our own planet is, of course, just a miniscule detail. Yet, as astronomers are fond of saying these days, we humans are made of star stuff, (which sounds better than the common recognition that when we die we are merely ‘ashes to ashes, and dust to dust’). Well, star stuff we may be, and the universe the biggest show on, or off, the Earth for sure, but Physical Space has no wonder, beauty, worth or purpose without us being there to make it so. Indeed, in terms of meaning, the vastness of space and time, and the amazing spectrum of matter and energy evident in the universe, can be seen as merely that, and nothing more. Which is why it is better to describe Physical Space in the objective terms of science, where meaning is avoided. So, for our purpose here, we can define Physical Space as that part of the universe where there is no life, and no meaning. Which means we cannot describe it as either hostile or uncaring - because it is neither of these. Instead, it simply IS.

Genetic space was born entirely out of the substance of physical space. It is therefore a classic example of the principle that the whole can amount to something greater than the sum of its individual parts. For although organic life is entirely composed of inorganic components, its fauna and flora represents something genuinely new in the history of the planet. Almost as if (but of course not actually) a discontinuity in the fabric of physical reality had occurred three thousand million years ago. And to follow and understand the results of this jump, a whole new body of ideas and principles had to be created - what we now recognise as the language and theories of the biological sciences.

To appreciate this discontinuity, all we have to do is ask a physicist or a chemist to explain, in physical terms, a butterfly, or a more obviously physical event, like non cyclic photophosphorylation. What will they tell us? Well, if they keep to their very own physical and chemical armoury of ideas, then their explanations are bound to remain within the realm of physics and chemistry. Which means we will learn rather little about both the butterfly and the metabolic pathway as their real significance can only be understood through bio logic - based on the principles of evolution, genetics, physiology and so on. For example, neither physics nor chemistry explain where they came from, or how they maintain themselves as more than just objects or pathways, and for that we need Biology.

Physical space is as wide as the universe, and as small as a fundamental particle, with events ranging from periods smaller than a nanosecond, and larger than a millenium of geological time. Genetic space on the other hand, and I am thinking here particularly of the animal and plant life on planet Earth, is far, far more restricted. In terms of the universe, all it amounts to is a relatively small set of pigmented blots, scattered here and there within the vastness of space. (For life is a local thing). Yet within these restrictions of scale, life ranges through an impressive number of 'levels of organisation' (macromolecule, organelle, cell, tissue, organ, organism, mating pair, population, species, community and ecosystem). These units are never as small, nor indeed ever as large, as the components of physical space. But the organic world displays a fantastic variety of structures and behaviours, and what it loses in scale, it makes up for in levels of complexity and rates of change. For the beings that populate this level of reality have notched up the pace and diversity of existence by a furious margin, leading us to consider them as part of a whole new dimension in history, complete with a whole new standard of measurement: the timescale of biological evolution.

Then, at some point in the recent history of genetic space, a particular combination of structural and behavioural possiblities from the animal kingdom came together to make a new, and tertiary level of reality. Again, the combination derived entirely from the components of the previous level, and again, this created a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. It is convenient to call the result of this new combination of elements 'Social Space'.

In terms of scale, if Physical Space is the universe, and if Genetic Space is a series of pigmented blobs on a certain set of planets, then Social Space amounts to a very small number of entities within the ecosystems of a very small number of these pigmented blobs, on a very small number of planets within the vastness of space. Intelligent life, it seems, may be more complex than anything that precedes it, but it is also, to use that increasingly popular catchphrase, ‘vanishingly small’.

Which on planet Earth means that Social Space is to be found in only a single species and, more particularly, within the circumference of the human skull, and nowhere else. Nor should we be misled by the extensive bodies of information and material culture that social space has set up in the territories of physical and genetic space. For although the environment of our homes, gardens, transport and media is basic to our emergence from genetic space, and an essential part of our existence in social space, it is not living in the special sense that this term has for a level three reality. Rather, the physical outer shell of our material life is to the core of social space as a coral reef is to the polyp that creates it. The reef of material wealth is not, in itself, the living intelligent wreath of consciousness that so characterises social space, but rather the purpose built shell by which it pursues its needs and aims.

The fundamental unit of social space is the self. But because the self is housed in a body, it relates to other selves, and to other phenomena in physical, genetic and social space, through its senses and organs. It is particularly through the twin agency of the mouth and the hand that the self has its effect on the world outside. Through the mouth, the self sets up a network of communication that makes up the speech community within which it lives, and through the hand, the self sets up an extensive material culture within which it exercises its values in physical form. Together, this dual world of information and material form makes up the environment in which we live.

At its most literal, Social Space is what lies in the minds of a group of intelligent life forms, such as the human race. It must always have an extra somatic extension in Physical and Genetic Space, but this material reality can only be seen as ‘alive with meaning’ if there are minds around to appreciate its significance. Otherwise, it is merely a part of the physical world.

Personally, I like to think of Social Space as an invisible field of meaning, hanging at eye level within and between a host of human faces. I also find it useful to imagine this reality in other ways. For example, in Alice Through The Looking Glass, the landscape, (which is probably based on the checked pattern of fields in Beckley, just outside Oxford, where the author lived) is in the pattern of a chessboard, and of course Alice starts out as a pawn. Well, first of all this is a classic ‘landscape of the imagination’. But also, like the Bugs Bunny cartoon or indeed any cartoon, it is a good example of an inner world of fantasy that takes what it needs from physical space, and then goes down a rabbit hole, or through a mirror, or a wardrobe or a hobbit hole, or a tear in the fabric of reality to get to a Wonderland, Narnia, Middle Earth, or the worlds created by Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials trilogy. (All ‘Made in Oxford’ by the way).

One thing I find particularly interesting about our existence in social space is that we spend so much time looking inwards, rather than looking outwards at physical space. Our attention is largely within, and not without. Let us explore what that might mean... This will lead to an appreciation of the third level of reality on this planet - namely, Social Space.

How Did Such A Risky Thing As The Imagination Evolve?

The central creative force behind the generation of social space is the human imagination. It was not the bipedal stance, the opposable thumb, nor extended infancy that lifted man above the strict causal framework of animal existence. It was not the use of fire, the creation of tools, or even the invention of soft toilet rolls that gave man his ability to soar above the strictures of physical and genetic space. It was the development of the human imagination that gave us the freedom to create new rules, new aspirations and new worlds. It was the evolution of the imagination, feathered by language, that gave us the wings on our heads. And this takes us immediately to one of the key questions in our understanding of the origins of social space. How did the imagination evolve? How did we get wings on our heads? And the only way to answer this question is to go back to our roots in animal behaviour.

Animals are fixed to the present and tied to the past. If animal behaviour was a form of grammar, it would divide into three tenses: sensory present (how things are), individual past (the 'ontogenetic perfect' of how things have been in the past of each individual), and species past (the 'phylogenetic perfect' of how things have been in the past of the species). The significance of this to the evolution of social space is that the imagination introduces a whole new dimension to animal grammar: the subjunctive tense of how things 'might be' in the future. Now in order to see how this new tense might have evolved, we must look at these older tenses of animal grammar.

When a fledgling bird crouches low at the sight of a hawk flying overhead, it is using two tenses in its response: what I like to call ‘the sensory present’ and ‘the species past’. When it sees the hawk, its eyes pass a real-time picture of the sensory present to its central nervous system, where it is then matched with a ‘picture’ from the phylogenetic past of the bird species. Because an innate ‘picture’ of an aerial predator silhouette is held there as the result of past selection, it can match this with the incoming picture from the senses. If it fits, an inbuilt response is triggered, and the fledgling crouches. In other words, we are looking at an innate pattern of recognition and response from the species past, an active real-time picture from the sensory present, and a procedure which, for the sake of our own visual imaginations, we can call 'picture matching'.

This system of instinctive response is so effective that it is hard to see why other tenses of animal grammar then evolved. Surely, it is always better to have the prior knowledge that is entailed in the innate recognitions and responses of the species past? That way, the fledgling bird avoids learning about hawks the hard way. For, as long as the sensory present can match pictures against the key pictures picked up by its phylogenetic past, the successful responses can be triggered, and the animal will survive. In fact, why did learning, with its new and short-lived tense of the individual past, evolve at all?

There is a fundamental limitation to the protective power of innate behaviours. It is that stored information from the phylogenetic past may become inappropriate as circumstances change in the more recent present. Things change. For example, although a digger wasp must carry an innate directive to seek out a sandbank for its burrow, its genes cannot provide the specific details of an actual site because there is no way of knowing these details in advance. Only by learning these details can the wasp locate its burrow site when it returns with the food for its young. So it is in conditions like these that the capacity to learn gains a selective advantage. If the wasp can update on the shifting sands of its own environment within the brief span of its adult life, rather than relying on the much slower timescale of genetic evolution for its adaptations, then it can overcome the limitations written into the innate response. For this reason, learning is common in the animal kingdom. Because in matters such as territorial recognition, individual memory is the only solution to the shortcomings of species memory.

Fine. If instinct relies on picture matching between sensory present and species past, then what does the mechanism of learning involve? The answer is a modification to this system. As long as pictures from the sensory present can be selectively 'frozen' to make a new form of memory, then this new information can be matched against incoming sensory data in just the same way that matching occurs in instinctive behaviour. For example, once the picture of the territory surrounding the digger wasp site is frozen, its identity can be matched with further pictures coming in from the senses as the wasp comes home. The match between the frozen and real-time pictures will enable it to check and correct its course back to the burrow. So the old system has been modified to achieve a dynamic new capacity, and this means that the animal is no longer bound by the past of its species: it can learn things for itself.So what about the imagination? Where does the subjunctive tense of ‘what might be’ belong in the scheme of things? Because if a combination of instinctive and learnt behaviour allows the animal to exploit the advantages of both tenses of the animal past, what reason could there be for the evolution of yet another tense?

Well, again, the answer has to do with limitations. The thing is, learning does bring with it certain major advantages, but in some ways it also falls short. For example, if an animal faces a new and dangerous situation, and the cost of getting it wrong is death, then the price of learning this lesson afresh is clearly to be avoided. Now, in principle, an innate response from the species memory could certainly get around this problem, except that in this case, the situation is new. There has simply been no time for the new behaviour to arise (and that’s whether it arises by chance mutation in the first place). This brings us to an important question. How can the risks that come with trial and error be avoided altogether (whilst at the same time maintaining the up-to-date nature of learnt behaviour)? How can an animal learn new things, during its own lifetime, whilst avoiding the cost of that learning?

One answer is that the animal can remove itself from the direct consequences of error by spotting the mistakes of others, or by imitating the behaviour of fellow members of its group. It can, as it were, learn from its parents or fellows. An opportunist strategy that places the user one step away from the line of fire. Vicarious perhaps, but effective. Could this then be the answer to our problem of the dangers of trial and error? Perhaps. After all, imitation does work, and does sidestep certain problems. Well, just as long as the other members of the group are up to scratch on the challenges around them that is. But the trouble is, they may not be. Or, they may not want to share the advantage they have acquired. Or perhaps they are unable to pass it on because they are not there when the danger presents itself. So the fundamental question remains. Is there any way in which the challenge of the environment can be answered without the limitations of imitation and learning?

Consider the behaviour of a chimp in an experimental situation where the chimp is separated from a test (along with the inevitable banana) by a set of bars. The bars ensure that it sits outside, but also allow it to observe the situation. And from its vantage point, it sees that there is only one way to reach this banana. Namely, through the clever combination of objects that have been left on the floor inside. To reach its prize, the chimp must reach through the grill for a stick that is itself too short to reach the banana. Then it can use this stick to reach another longer stick, and use that one to gain its reward. Now, not surprisingly, chimps generally accomplish this task with ease. But what sort of mental process are they using to solve this problem? Is it just another case of learnt behaviour, or is a different order of mental process involved?

In the accounts of such experiments, it is apparently common for the chimp to pause, and stare around somewhat vacantly, between an initial failure to secure the banana, and the sudden resolution of the problem. An interval of hesitation and doubt that possibly marks what could be an internal attempt to float various possible combinations of the objects on the other side of the grill, always with the banana firmly in mind. The chimp gazes round, juggles these different alternatives in its head, arrives at a solution, acts upon it, and gets the banana.Such juggling requires an internal modelling of reality qualitatively different to the animal grammar we have considered so far. This is a mechanism that leads to an alternative view of reality that the chimp has never come across before - a new combination – in this case of tools. Such a new combination represents a radical departure from the high-fidelity, picture-making and matching of most animal behaviours. So what is the nature of this departure, and what gives this new behaviour a selective advantage?

Innate and learnt behaviours are inherently conservative. They are faithful to the 'what has been' of the species in its phylogenetic past, the 'what has recently been' of the individual in its ontogenetic past, and the 'what is' of the real-time sensory present. To see why this fidelity is critical, one only has to look at what happens when innate, learnt and real-time pictures are disturbed by forces such as mutation, memory lapse, or poor sensory reception. Basically, an animal that ceases to be faithful to its present and past is not likely to survive long.

Now, in contrast to these inborn and learnt behaviours, the imagination is inherently creative. It unlocks the existing picture-making ability of the brain, frees it from its literal-minded fidelity to the past and present, and floats its elements to the surface of a new awareness. Here they can be held and perhaps realigned, with the aim of creating a new combination consistent with the parameters set by reality outside. The process is channelled by the instincts, which give the imagination a goal to focus on; by the senses, which present the brain with an accurate picture of the problem; and by past experience, which enables the imagination to choose likely combinations and solutions. So our chimp, faced with a problem that cannot be solved through innate or learnt abilities, frees its mind from its slavish alliance to the world of 'what has been', looses off from the fixity of 'what is', and instead pictures the world of 'what might be'. Only by doing this is the chimp able to circumvent the limitation of behaviours based upon these old responses, and create radically new responses in the process.

This is where the advantage of this new behaviour lies. Although learnt behaviour is flexible when compared to innate behaviour, it still depends on direct experience (or the presence of others) for its progress in solving problems. However, this limitation does not apply to the subjunctive tense of the imagination, which can operate inside the head of its owner at one stage removed from these restrictions.Despite this advantage, we are bound to ask how such a risky thing as the imagination evolved in the first place. How could a system that makes things up 'as it goes along' develop from a system that maintains such an accurate and literal fix on natural reality? The answer is that although the chimp departs from the literal world of 'what is' when it imagines different ways of getting the banana, this freedom nevertheless begins and ends in the needs of the animal. The chimp is taking a minimal risk because both its recognition and response to the banana are held firmly in place by the directives of genetic space. (There's a banana. Go and get it now!).

This brings us to an issue that takes us away from the insights of biology, and marks the point where we move from genetic space to the relatively unexplored territory of social space. The question is this:In our own lives, how much of what we do and think is controlled by animal logic, and how much by social logic? Or to put it another way, can we explain human thought and action through the same biological insight that we use to explain chimp behaviour?