We Need Play to Learn the Rules of the Game for the Civil...

The Real Significance of Play.—This scheme is, doubtless, imperfect, as critics of Groos’s book have taken occasion to point out, but the idea which underlies it all is a most suggestive and illuminating one, when rightly understood. In his latest work on the play of man, which has recently appeared, Groos makes clear this point (253, p. 492), when he observes: ‘I presuppose everywhere the existence of innate impulses (Triebe), and assume that these have only led to play-exercise (Spiel...

 Pattern-Seeking Through Play

Meredith's worldplay was shot through with yet another well-recognized ingigredienlent of creative thinking, the comparison and synthesis of two or more unlike things. As the mathematician and poet Jacob Bronowski famously expressed it, the discoveries of science and of art "are explorations—^more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness The same holds true for the insights generated in worldplay. Documents of play in Lewis, like many a child, combined the animal and the human in Lord Big. Una...

 Go make that stuff manifesto

Go make that stuff The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use - do the work you want to see done.

 The Umwelt Bubble

The biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s term Umwelt refers to a concept about the subjective world of an organism. The world can be imagined as a soap bubble, which surrounds each individual and contains signifying markers relevant only to the world of that specific creature. This soap bubble, or Umwelt, is actively created by the individual organism in a process of forming a perception of reality, which is guided by the organism’s design, its physiology, and its needs. According to Uexküll,...

 Art of Dungeon Mastery

Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there's always room for improvement. Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice. There are hundreds of tricks, shortcuts, and simple principles that can make you a better, more dramatic, and more creative game master.

 Consider Eliminating the Humanities

To stop teaching literature and the other arts on the grounds that they're bad for us would be like refusing to study diseases because they're bad for us. However, maybe there should be a moratorium on requiring those who don't really want to, to take courses in the "humanities." We first have to figure out where we are. Then if we decide that every college student should be exposed to the "humanities," let us also insist that every one of them be exposed to the sciences, social sciences, and...

 Technology VS Nature is a False Dichotomy

The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology, that's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is—not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both. [...] The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer o...

 Good Scientists Study the Problems They Think They Can Solve

No scientist is admired for failing in the attempt to solve problems that lie beyond his competence. The most he can hope for is the kindly contempt earned by the Utopian politician. If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are inmiensely practicalminded affairs. Good scientists study the most important problems they think they can solve. It is, after all, their professional business to solve problems, not merely to grapple with them.

 Hippocratic Oath

I swear by Apollo the physician, by Asclepius, by Heahh, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart...

 The Talent of Mechanics

Generally speaking, people have a very erroneous idea of the type of talent proper to the ideal mechanician. He is not a geometrician who, delving into the theory of movement and the categories of phenomena, formulates new mechanical principles or discovers unsuspected laws of nature.… In most other branches of science are to be found constant principles; a multitude of methods offer to the genius inexhaustible possibilities. If a scholar poses himself a new problem, he can attack it fortif...