Thursday, August 02, 2007

Emergence of instituions through game playing - Csikszentmihalyi on Huizinga

as paraphrased by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi :

the 'serious' institutions that constitute society - science, the law, the arts, religion and even the armed forces - all started out as games, as contexts in which people could play and experience the enjoyment of goal-directed action. Science, for instance, Huizinga claimed, has spontaneously evolved in every culture as games of riddling in which individuals test their memory, their knowledge of facts and relationships, in public contests against other riddlers - a perhaps primitive, but highly enjoyable, display of knowledge.

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