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Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play 1
Author(s) -
MILLER STEPHEN
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1973.75.1.02a00050
Subject(s) - action (physics) , flexibility (engineering) , epistemology , center (category theory) , sociology , aesthetics , history , philosophy , mathematics , physics , chemistry , statistics , quantum mechanics , crystallography
Two main questions are asked here about play. (1) Is it really a coherent category of activity in spite of the diverse forms it takes in man and animals? (2) Does it make sense in terms of the evolution of behavior that play should have become so ubiquitous among our activities? These questions are approached by looking at play as a way of orchestrating the ends and means of action in which the means are the center of interest, in which the economics of survival are subordinated to combinatorial flexibility.