A professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, Sutton-Smith hoped to find a "universal theory" that would tie myriad strands of psychology, evolution science, neurobiology, philosophy and folklore into an overarching explanation of why people play and how they came to do it....
"Play begins as a major feature of mammalian evolution and remains as a major method of becoming reconciled with our present universe," he wrote. "In this respect, play resembles both sex and religion, two other forms — however temporary or durable — of human salvation in our earthly box."
In his book The Ambiguity of Play (1997) Sutton-Smith again seeks to define the field and its necessity:
“What seems most obvious about play, whether that of animals, children, or adults, is that it is a very exciting kind of activity that players carry on because they like doing so. It doesn’t seem to have too much to do with anything else. Yet, as this work will attest, it is typically interpreted as having value not just for itself but because of other functions that it serves in individual development and group culture.”
By ambiguity Sutton-Smith apparently means stuff like the hunting behavior of kittens, as instanced by a commentator:
" [I]t is difficult to not associate lion cubs pouncing in the grass on inanimate objects as a type of preparation for hunting when they are older."
His obituary mentioned:
Asked about trends in the industry at a 1977 toy fair packed with electronic gizmos, he said kids should get out more. "Apparently, we are planning a world where we live indoors," he said.
According to his daughter, Brian Sutton-Smith's "thoughts on play kept evolving and play itself never stood still. Still, it had to be studied; for Sutton-Smith, play was nothing less than an existential necessity."
Perhaps in his willingness to retrun and revise his own ideas on play, Brian Sutton-Smith demonstrates in his intellectual practise a kind of play.
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