A Taboo, an Unsolved Riddle
In science, the yawn has not received its due attention.
In this investigation I provide (1) a systematic-encyclopedic overview of all available knowledge about yawning. The fields from which I derive my data are linguistics (semantics, etymology), sociology, psychology, the medical sciences (anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology), and the arts (literature, film, visual arts). Then, I (2) associate a number of these data in order to (3) test the hypothesis that yawning has an erotic side, a sexual aspect.
The mass of data that I present in the encyclopedic overview makes one thing clear: there is no good explanation for yawning.
(That’s an excerpt from the article “On Yawning; or, The Hidden Sexuality of the Human Yawn,” by Wolter Seuntjens, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, published in AIR 11:1)