I’m getting punnier, because with age comes witdom. The Sanskrit verb vid, “to perceive” is the root of witan, Old English for “to know or understand” and the word “wisdom.” Vid is also the source for the German word for wit, witz. So wit and wisdom are etymologically (word origin), epistemologically (how we know things) and psychologically related. Punsters and pundits would agree, the Pun Also Rises. 

“There is no sharp boundary splitting the wit of the scientist, inventor, or improviser from that of the artist, the sage, or the jester. The creative experience moves seamlessly from the “Aha!” of scientific discovery to the “Ah” of aesthetic insight to the “Ha-ha” of the the pun and the punch line. Comic discovery is paradox stated—scientific discovery is paradox resolved.”

This quote comes from Wit’s End by James Geary—a book perfect for an afternoon sojourn into “what wit is, how it works, and why we need it” (book's subtitle). Geary also wrote I is an Other: the Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World which is a related must-read. As I have discussed in previous blogs, metaphors and analogies enhance the connections, creativity, and circuitous routes to scientific discoveries and technological innovations.

Just as metaphors hold two concepts with one, puns hold two ideas with one word, as with a macaronic wordplay (from Latin macaronicus, meaning “jumble” or “medley”) such as a “haute dog” as an elegant frankfurter. Puns are powerful proofs of “bisociation,” seeing similarities in the dissimilar. It is the foundation for all creativity, according to author and cultural critic Arthur Koestler.

Geary convincingly argues that serendipitous discoveries are actually the results of sophisticated wit, relying on acute powers of attention and observation. Connecting two unrelated ideas with associations previously unseen is not a pure accident, but needs a mind primed to hold two concepts at the same time as one. To wit, Neils Bohr shows we have a witty universe, made up of quantum puns—particles with the ability to hold themselves in two different states at the same time.

Another route to the historical world of analogies, metaphors, and puns is through etymology. The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth contains entertaining origin of words and even how ‘do-re-mi’ came to be (it’s not from a deer or a ray of sun.) Two examples taken from the book:

Antanaclasis is a common type of pun using the literary trope of repeating the same word in difference senses. In Latin, “Malo malo malo malo” means “I would rather be an apple tree than be a bad boy in trouble.” More importantly, St. Jerome punned the adjectival form of “evil” in Latin (malum) with the same Latin word for “apple” to give us the now well-known image of Eve biting on an apple in Genesis. Is that why the iPhone is so addictive?

Organon (Greek) is something you work with—a tool, implement, any musical instrument, or part of the body. Why did Bach have twenty children? Because he had no stops on his organ. As for my aging self, I am practicing my well-rehearsed organ recital in response to “how are you?”

Lest you think puns are only important in science and the arts, politics is a major arena. In authoritarian states that abhor the use of ambiguous language to incite subversion, clever netizens have unimaginable wit to create terms that outsmart censorious prohibition. Chinese puns are common due to its large number of homophonous syllables. 

Back to The Pun Also Rises, written by John Pollack, a true gem for the wit-it. The book reminds me that I could have been a psychiatrist but the thought made me shrink, but dermatologist make too many rash decisions. Gastroenterologists have to see a-holes every day and I didn’t make the cut to be a surgeon. So I emerged as an emergentologist, knowing just the simple mantra of ABCs.