How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect – NYT
Interesting, if pretty surface-level, article about how nonsense makes our brains eager to find a new pattern, and sometimes might even help learning.
An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound “sensation of the absurd,” and he wasn’t the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in an essay called “The Uncanny,” traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of “something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.”
At best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy.
Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.
via Mind – How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect – NYTimes.com.
Another way of describing it is that nonsense turns on the seeking button in our brains. We expect sense, we get none, and we are left hungry for something to fill the void left by that expectation.