Ends, Means, and Galumphing: Some Leitmotifs of Play1

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.

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