Make money doing the work you believe in
I was texting this morning with Jonny Thomson, Big Think’s resident philosopher, who told me that the question, “What is a game?” is an inside joke among philosophers. You can thank Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose Philosophical Investigations showed how the meaning of a word isn’t necessarily found in its definitions. Games were his famous example.
Case in point: Solitaire and water polo are both games. What do they have in common? You can think of an answer, but it’s unlikely to be one that would help a Martian who’s never played a game immediately understand what “game” means in all contexts.
“Play” is a similarly slippery term, though it may be even harder to define. Yes, you are playing when you’re passing a football to a wide receiver, but you’re also playing when you’re improvising a jazz guitar solo, solving a crossword puzzle, or somersaulting down a hill. The Martian looks on, scratching his head.
Wittgenstein and definitions aside, we can’t help but know exactly what it means to play. It’s a deep-seated evolutionary drive not only in humans but across the animal kingdom — we use it to learn, practice, enjoy ourselves, bond with each other, and, in a handful of secure buildings across the U.S., study how we might avoid World War III.
That instinct is what our latest digital issue, The Power of Play, is all about.
Explore some of the articles written by Alex Hutchinson, Jason Bittel, Francesca Tighinean, Elise Leise, Jonny Thomson, Kevin Dickinson, and more.
