Science of Meaning

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?

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, 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.

The first thing to note is that although the 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 thus it falls. Despite the twist, credibility is maintained.

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 fail and so irritate us?

Right. 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 that look?

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. It is a twist without a license.

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 in I will call the ‘legit’. So 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 where it goes. Let’s see if we can find a justification that will give the 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 smash 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.

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.

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.