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"The passion of laughter is nothing else than sudden glory arising from some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
- Thomas Hobbes

Well before Aristotle, the orthodox western viewpoint has attempted to separate, compartmentalise, and classify the world around us, to identify as "not this, but that": this is edible, that is not. Not until the relatively recent overhaul of taxonomy, with parallel chaos and quantum theories arising across the fields, has it again been considered that something could be "both this and that".

In the act of classification, categories were often associatively assigned a relative value which did not inherently exist: and thus the act of classification also became the act of stratification. To say "not this, but that" gradually became "this is better than that": even though the act of classification itself does not in itself require assignation of value, only of quality. However, it can be very difficult to identify classifying factors without assigning a parallel relative value.

Out of observation, identification, classification, and stratification arises humour.

Thus both Plato and Aristotle saw the joke as inherently abusive; although Aristotle, unlike Plato, found a role for the joke in leading a virtuous life: the differentiation being that the laughter of the virtuous person is both temperate and moderate. Deliberately provoking laughter thus demeaned both laugher and laughed-at, and was generally to be discouraged. However, it was Thomas Hobbes who most clearly articulated what is now called the superiority theory of humour, the essence of which is that laughter is always evoked by situations which evoke our own sense of superiority.

Do we gain more in understanding and in process of understanding by classifying differentiating factors or by identifying shared traits? Is the process of differentiation enhanced by assigning relative value to categories, or is its usefulness as a tool for understanding undermined thereby? Is it still possible to identify and classify something that exists in this group but not in that group without automatically assigning relative value? Me, I think yes: but I know that many others not only don't agree, but don't see any point in identification and classification independent of linked relative value.

Accurate, pointed observation often comes at the expense of those unwilling to acknowledge that particular way of seeing ... or perhaps unwilling to

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