The Evolutionary Importance of Play and Its Manifestations

Adults and children spend their days differently - we work, babies play. Play is the signature of childhood. It’s a living, visible manifestation of imagination and learning I action.

Allison Gopnik

If play is a constant and a genuine human drive, how do we recognise it when we see it in the world? Or more specifically; in which kind of behaviours does play manifest itself? We have looked at the five specific criteria, or characteristics of play, it’s fun and enjoyable, seemingly purposeless, it’s self motivated, there are rules involved, and it’s a free and imaginative improvisation. Each of these five criteria are characteristics of the process we call play, but in the same way a person is multifaceted and must be expressed through more than five specific features, I would expect that we could get a better grasp of what the play instinct looks like by finding more ways it manifests itself in the world. What kind of behaviours or attributes are playful? To answer this question I think it would be good to start looking at those who plays the most, those whom for play is their natural way of being in the world; children.

Then I look at the first of the manifestations of the play impulse which I believe is curiosity.

Links:

Here's some info on Ashley Montague.
Here's the goodreads link to Montague's book Growing Young and here's a write up about the book in the New York Times

This is an interview with Tyson Yunkaporta who's wonderful book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World is a good and worthwhile read.