Nonsense can be deliberate or involuntary, and involuntary nonsense is common in hospitals, especially psychiatric hospitals. Doctors and nurses working in those settings frequently hear their patients talking nonsense involuntarily. Far more people are out and about than are working in hospitals, though, and those people are far more likely to hear or read nonsense that someone created deliberately, usually for entertainment or artistic purposes.
Nonsense is predominantly a recreational and literary form of language. The nonsense that most Americans hear or read most frequently was written for use in play, recreation, entertainment, literature, and songs. Nonsense is common in children’s oral literature, such as nursery rhymes, jump rope rhymes, and riddles. Popular children’s authors who are famous for their nonsense writings include Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Quentin Blake, and Shel Silverstein. Authors such as Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett wrote surrealistic nonsense that provoked philosophical discussion among adult readers and theater audiences. To summarize, then, nonsense is a genre of oral and written literature for children and adults.
The next chapter will give specific examples of nonsense from all of the above authors. Later we will refer to some examples of nonsense from popular forms of music, too, for nonsense is a standard ingredient of certain kinds of songs, including traditional ballads, scat singing, and doo-wop. Nonsense in entertainment, recreation, play, poetry, and song is ubiquitous in modern American society. Moreover, those are the settings in which Americans most frequently encounter nonsense, and therefore, for them, nonsense is a thoroughly pleasant experience.
Still, people hardly ever think about all of the positive nonsense that they take in as nonsense. Strangely, it never occurs to them that, for instance, lines in popular songs they like to listen to are nonsense. Although nonsense they hear and read almost always affects them positively, and they like it, they seldom think of it as nonsense. In fact, the word “nonsense” has a strongly negative effect on them.
Nonsense itself affects people positively, but the word “nonsense” affects people negatively. That is, people like nonsense itself, but they dislike the word “nonsense.” People do not associate the many good effects they enjoy from deliberate nonsense with the word “nonsense.” Instead, they associate the word “nonsense” with one common negative effect of involuntary nonsense: specifically, errors.
“Nonsense” is predominantly a pejorative term of criticism and debate. Nonsense sometimes indicates a cognitive failure. Delirious, psychotic, or intoxicated people, as already noted, talk nonsense involuntarily because they have difficulty with cognitive processing. People whose cognitive processes are fully intact may, nonetheless, talk nonsense inadvertently because of mixing incompatible concepts. For example, a football coach once said to his players, “You guys pair up in threes.”
In other words, talking nonsense without intending to is sometimes a sign of cognitive impairment due to organic illness or somebody may talk nonsense unintentionally because of misunderstanding concepts. Talking nonsense is a kind of error in both cases. Accordingly, people naturally associated talking nonsense with errors, and they then use the word “nonsense” pejoratively to denounce something somebody else said.
“Nonsense,” “unintelligible,” and “meaningless” are stock terms of criticism in serious scientific, academic, and religious debate. Saying “That is nonsense!” is an accepted way of objecting to new ideas that are put forward for rational inquiry. Objecting that an idea is unintelligible or meaningless or nonsensical is a common ploy in learned debate as well as in public discourse. In fact, the word “nonsense” occurs most frequently within the context of debate and disputation.
The following selection of quotations will illustrate how common this kind of objection is. The examples below are typical of many others that anyone could find. They are common in news magazines, newspapers, academic works, and science publications.
Squeezing light—the very idea seems nonsensical. How do you grab something as intangible as light and throttle it down to something smaller? Understanding how this is possible goes to the heart of what we now know light to be.
—Sidney Perkowitz2
People often criticize discussions of multiple universes as meaningless because we can’t detect whether they actually exist.
—Anthony Aquirre3
Infinity mathematics, to me, is something that is meaningless, because it is abstract nonsense….We have to kick the misleading word “undecidable” from the mathematical lingo since it tacitly assumes that infinity is real. We should rather replace it with the phrase “not even wrong” (in other words, utter nonsense).
—Doron Zeilberger4
Some researchers believe that by writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of better health. It may sound like self-help nonsense, but research suggests that the effects are real.
—Tara Parker-Pope5
Some people might think of “miracles” as particular juxtapositions of events, each of which has a correct and acceptable scientific explanation. This might be nonsensical, but it would be interesting to discover wherein the nonsense lies.
—Hugh McLachlan6
Evidently, dismissing somebody’s ideas as “unintelligible nonsense” is an accepted technique of raising an objection in rational debate. Objections that some proposed idea is nonsense have been raised and debated in physics, cosmology, philosophy, mathematics, religious studies, medicine, and economics. The quotations above are enough to tell us a lot about the use of “nonsense” in rational argumentation and disputation.
Ancient Greek philosophers who founded rational thought dubbed ideas “nonsense” as a way of rejecting them and setting them aside. That way of arguing against inconvenient ideas or claims is still standard practice in the pursuit of knowledge. Furthermore, objecting that an unfamiliar notion is unintelligible nonsense is treated as though it were a powerful argument. After all, if a claim is unintelligible, there is nothing there in the way of content that can be investigated by rational methods. Theoretically, then, demonstrating that somebody’s idea or position is unintelligible nonsense should put a stop to rational inquiry into the matter.
When raising this kind of objection, people use “nonsense” and “unintelligible” and “meaningless” as interchangeable terms. Yet, despite the presumed authority and finality of proving that an idea is unintelligible and nonsensical, this form of argument has a poor track record. For centuries, scoffers have greeted revolutionary new thoughts and theories by saying that they are unintelligible or nonsensical.
There are no explicit, public rules and procedures that govern accusing someone of talking nonsense or defending one’s own position against such an accusation. That is shocking, too, given that arguing that way is such a widespread, accepted practice in serious scientific, academic, and religious discussions. Why is such a startling departure from rigorous, rational standards allowed in this case?