Jonathan,

A basic premise to consider is the process and relationship of expansion and contraction/consolidation and applying this physical dynamic to the evolution of knowledge and society. The kind of play you are emphasizing is a mental expansion and the flip side of this is the knowledge and principles which coalesce out of this expansion stage.

I think there are two aspects of this to consider; First is that expansion is wholistic. Like a balloon, or light expanding from a source, or even flowers and children expanding out in the spring and youth of their lives, it is relatively formless in the sense it is non-judgmental and simply absorbs what is in its way. Consolidation is the opposite. It is constantly congregating into points and areas of attraction and structure and is mentally judgmental and structured.

Now secondarily consider how this dichotomy defines much of what you are describing, both good and bad. All that structure and pressure modern society puts us under is also the accumulated wisdom, rules, assumptions, instructions, desires, judgments, etc. of those who came before and the monetary and economic pressures are similar assumptions and expectations of a society which is slowing and looking for sources of fresh energy and insight, but drown those little buds that do poke themselves up under a great deal of blowback and judgment. Even dealing with professional scientists, I find a great deal of preformed opinions which occasionally seems to me to be herd mentality, but to their proponents is received wisdom. Right now that playful tendency that is out on the cutting edge of theory is dreaming up multiverses and multitudes of extra dimensions, etc. Should this prove to be unsustainable, it will contract into a harder and more judgmental set of principles which prove more stable and viable, because that is the eternal process of expansion and contraction. Those flowers will bloom in the spring, harden into solid growth over the summer and die back in the winter, only to bloom forth again in the spring. So rather than just encourage that wholistic expansion, also put it in the larger context of what came before and why it is what it is and that might better inform us of what still might be necessary efforts of future growth.

Regards,

John Merryman

    Thank You John,

    I have heard the dynamic you speak of referred to as involution/evolution, and indeed it is one of the key ways in which we grow in our knowledge of the world and our ability to influence our destiny. There is always this interplay between the outward and inward paths to knowledge. You should check out what Alison Gopnik has to say, regarding the 'lantern vs searchlight' analogy. Young children search for knowledge in a way that is more like someone holding a lantern at the edge of a campfire - representing what is known. But adults tend to use a searchlight instead which is far more intense and focused.

    But the approach you offer has advantages, and I think it is closer to what we observe in the young - which is good. For humans to survive long enough to learn some important lessons, we need to approach some things more like children rather than behaving more like adults.

    All the best,

    Jonathan

    Dear Jonathan,

    it is hard to disagree with you, and with the importance that you attribute so passionately to a playful approach to science and maths, and yet the daily activity of a researcher working in public research institutions tends to be sadly affected by competition scenarios, deadlines, etc. (but I read that at Google they have ping-pong tables down the hall!).

    Anyway, I was a bit surprised that, in an essay in which the word `play` occurs many times, the related word `music` is completely missing. Having read your bio, I suppose that playing music is one of the forms of play that you contemplate yourself.

    It is sad to hear so many high school students (at least in Italy) say that they do not `understand` Math, let alone `enjoying` it. This is because their teachers have failed to let them find out how much fun it can be - probably because they did not enjoy learning it in the first place.

    But it is not accidental that so many famous scientists have cultivated music as well.

    In my opinion, for stimulating creativity and innovation skills, kids should be exposed as early as possible both the the fun of maths and to that of music, and music improvisation.

    And I fully agree that this relation to the playful side of life should be preserved all life long, both at home and at work (which is why I have a keyboard in my office).

    Best Regards

    Tommaso

      Yes Tommaso,

      I also love Music. And it is absolutely true that Music improves Creativity and helps to inspire Innovation for many scientists and mathematicians, as well as for those who claim to be musicians. The work of Charles Limb is devoted, in some measure, to showing there is a neurological connection between musical improvisation and other kinds of learning and solving tasks of a more technical nature. In many ways, they are the same thing, or employ exactly the same skills. Learning to play and improvise music will absolutely improve creativity across the board, and enhances the skills that lead to scientific discovery and innovation.

      Beyond this; Music helps to keep us alive. If you examine the personal history of prominent folks like Les Paul and Pete Seeger, it is absolutely evident that playing music kept them in the game longer, allowing them to remain alive until an advanced age, so long as they kept playing. My Piano teacher Helen Baldwin slipped away only two days after learning she would not be able to play Piano concerts anymore, because Music was her reason for living.

      The very young have no inhibitions about Music, but sadly our culture instils a stigma that some young voices are 'not good enough' and educators see this as an enormous decrease in participation, beyond a certain age. Where 90% participation is normal for youngsters, this falls off to 10-15% for their older peers. So Music fares even worse than Science, in this regard.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

      Overall I agreed with your message. I think that a sense of fun or adventure is important in the business of both research and education. I think this is distinct from entertainment, and I think there is a tendency to make education into a media entertainment industry.

      Of course the game or business of science is guided often by the need to create some market or to provide some means to leverage power, such as weaponry.

      Cheers LC

        It is sadly true..

        The value of innovations to create better weapons often greatly overshadows utility in other areas of endeavor, but this tends to divide rather than unite us. Of course; this led to moral dilemmas for folks like A. Nobel and B. Fuller, and we need to remind ourselves that responsible usage of discoveries and developments in Science is essential to our survival.

        Pete Seeger commented about this in "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (pg. 282-283 and pg. 238). Pete's father had grave concerns about the terrible power scientists were putting in the hands of despots, near the end of his life, after being carefree for most of it. But Pete concluded that on balance Science had a greater power to help humanity than to destroy it.

        I am glad my playful message rang true for you otherwise.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

        Jonathan,

        Yes, there is a great deal to learn from early childhood education. I was married to a third grade school teacher, who often made the point she thought that was the age where they knew enough to appreciate what they were learning, but their minds were still completely open to new experiences and knowledge and that by the time they got to six grade were reaching the point that they were starting to think and act like they knew it all.

        The examples you use, the Pete Seegers and the Frank Lamberts, have plenty of rings around the old tree trunk, but what sets them apart is that they continue to grow, because they are the sort who realized the more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Like a lot of things, it is the two sides of the coin which make up the whole.

        Currently the tech industry is quite renown for emphasizing a youth and play culture and while it certainly keeps the energy level maxed out, sometimes the results seem to be endless games and networking apps that rise up and fade like daisies in the summer, when they can't 'monetize' them.

        In my own entry I conclude with the argument that if we want to get off, or at least slow down this money based treadmill, we need to start treating money as the contract it is, not the commodity we've come to think of it as.

        Regards,

        John M

        Thank you Joe!

        I think you raise a valid point, that the very fact we inhabit material bodies with surfaces, and utilize instruments all of which also have a distinct surface separating interior and exterior, induces the appearance of locality and fixity - that belies what is going on beneath the surface, and gives a probabilistic slant to Quantum Mechanics. The very fabric of interactions that give all of life's occurrences their uniqueness must be somehow woven into all events. That is; it could not be otherwise but that all individual manifestations of form have a unique relationship with the whole, that defines their place in the universe, and affirms your view that each such occurrence is a unique event.

        But the fact of all measurements taking place from a platform with a distinct surface, that defines a unique location in spacetime, does not preclude that someone moving with respect to your frame of reference might see things differently. While Einstein's framework is imperfect, it offers a range of computability for relational frameworks that Newton's formula does not. My guess is that we will find Albert's formulation to be an approximation of the truth, just as Isaac's was, but if it offers predictive capability, it is a useful model. So while GR may not be the ultimate truth, it is not worthless to learn its secrets.

        Regards,

        Jonathan

        Thank you for the detailed explanation, Joe..

        We are still left to wonder why the progress of radiant light is so slow, in relation to an unbounded velocity or the instantaneity of incident surfaces. I will take your words under consideration, but would prefer if a detailed discussion can take place on your essay page - once I have read your essay. I tend to remain in disbelief about both established views of Science and ready alternatives, 'common sense' or otherwise, rather than viewing those beliefs as facts.

        I think there is great value to considering things from the abstract view of trying to imagine why things happen as they do, rather than just accepting reality as it is. While I reject the notion that having things make sense in the abstract supersedes physical sensibility, I also reject the notion that it is useless to speculate - via abstract reasoning - about what the sensibility of Nature might be, which delivers to us the appearance of what we see.

        So I see no harm in abstract reasoning, even in pure Maths, so long as we do not mistake the word for the thing, the map for the territory, or an equation for the physical system it describes. You may hear physicists talking about constructing the Hamiltonian (for example), as though that has value in itself, but what they are really saying is that - if we can apply the conservation of energy and define the total energy for a system thereby, knowing this relation has value because it allows us to quantify something that otherwise would remain abstract.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

        Thank you Wilhelmus!

        Your paper is near the top of my list to read this weekend. I am sure I will enjoy your essay, and find much to agree with you on. It is important that we do consider what our evolutionary path might be, and set ourselves on a sustainable and productive road if that is not the case. I look forward to reading your essay and commenting.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

        Jonathan,

        Your perspective is mine. Pursuing a commodity is the overruling motivation motivation of the American culture, especially its economic precepts. We have turned our country into a cash register, where volumes of income and wealth overrule substantive pursuits. Sterile pursuits on Wall Street, attempts to privatize education through testing, and our money culture tend to overrun our ideas of a future.

        We need to push your ideas -- and mine -- to make education more vital and dynamic.

        A good read, Jonathan, providing examples that clarify.

        Jim

          Thanks greatly Jim,

          I enjoyed your essay, and I agree that there needs to be a concerted push toward an educational system that rewards young people for playing with ideas and learning to think for themselves - rather than rewarding memorization skills over intellect. I was not very good at memorization, as a child, but I came to develop a superior memory later in life - by engaging my brain while taking information and stimuli in, and cultivating a greater 'original awareness' of things I later want to remember. Forcing children to learn by rote, and thus robbing them of the rich web of associations which is formed in the neurons through playful engagement, leads to a more shallow understanding - even when things are remembered well.

          Another departed friend, Professor Jaime Keller, spoke with me after FFP11 and asked "Why at an international conference, with Nobel laureates and other top researchers speaking, were there so many stupid questions?" I think this is largely because our young people are learning through memorization, while people like Jaime and myself learned more to gain understanding. He started out in Chemistry, and curious about the underpinnings he studied Physics, but then decided he needed more Maths to understand that subject well, and so became an expert on Clifford Algebras.

          In that spirit; I think the most valuable skill we could teach is how to dig deeper, and then explain why to remain curious. Memorization promotes the illusion of knowledge as a collection of facts, but knowledge is a dynamic relationship between learning and reality. I find myself in a romance with pure knowledge, and I wish that could be taught.

          All the Best,

          Jonathan

          Hi Jonathan,

          Thanks for contributing another fine essay. Your emphasis on education as a means of improving our prospect for a bright future is on target. As an engineer engaged in industrial research I found that a playful approach to a problem was very productive. Later in my career I tried to understand what creates a productive environment. Actually, it wasn't necessary. The desire to create and solve difficult problems was part of the mental makeup of certain people. Finding the right people was the key. So the more difficult question is why do certain people have the target mental characteristics? You and some of the other essay contributors obviously have these characteristics. Don't take this the wrong way but we have a "hole" in our personality that needs to be filled with new understanding. We have no choice but to question things and our human pattern recognition causes us to see things that don't quite fit. You are clearly a science historian and know that many of the breakthrough thinkers had this characteristic. Play for some means mental exploration. When this became codified as the "scientific method", science took off...even when the environment was hostile to innovation.

          I appreciated your comments on my essay. There seems to be a growing recognition that nature is information based. Using your emphasis, I would say that nature is playful. Just look at the variety of plants and animals. Seahorses, clownfish and venus flytraps are examples of nature's fun and proof that fun and survival are complementary.

          I actually think the environment for innovation is quite hostile right now. The information age allows rapid communication but there is so much information that there has to be an arbitrator. The "scientific establishment" has taken the church's historic role as arbitrator. New is filtered as "wrong" and lack of affiliation is filtered as "outside". We could have a Copernicus among us but would we hear him?

          Ok, its fun anyway.

          Thanks Gene,

          I've un-stubbed your thoughts above, and I'm answering here to avoid having my reply roll over into invisible cyberspace. You speak of target characteristics, but I think part of it is exposure to good role models. Some of the qualities necessary for the scientific mindset to develop must be caught as well as taught. That is; people need to be exposed to the reality that it is fun to be on the forefront of Science. I had good role models from an early age, but I've also gotten to hear lectures from top scientists exploring the frontiers, and one couldn't help but catch the Science bug from some playful-minded people like Zeilinger and Osheroff.

          I want to create a video, or a series of them, emphasizing how the playful approach prevails, and how much fun there is to be had - exploring the frontiers in a subject like Physics today. I got to the second round, in the last FQXi grant program - where they requested a detailed game plan and budget - but I did not get my project funded. I'm on a much slower track with that as a result, but I do have a nice camera and editing suite, so I expect you will see some action on that front from me soon. However; I know full well that it will be necessary to get some well-known scientists to appear, if I am to reach a broader audience with this message.

          All the Best,

          Jonathan

            I want to add this..

            Science is, by nature, an open-ended endeavor. It has to be studiously open-ended to be of value scientifically. That is to say; scientists must go to great lengths to be objective and impartial, so that the experiment does not merely verify what they are intending to prove erroneously. It is not easy, in some cases, to eliminate experimental errors or make some of those errors self-cancelling. So the very design of an experiment must take into account al possible sources of error, and systematically compensate for every one of them - within the tightest tolerances technologically possible.

            But if you have done your homework, there is no telling what you might find - at least until you do the experiment.

            Have Fun!

            Jonathan

            Dear Jonathan

            Just a short note to say I read your essay and enjoyed it. Your message is important - Newton would have surely agreed with you judging from his famous and beautiful quote:

            "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

            I hope to return with some more comments but for now playing with our visiting grandson of two absolutely takes precedence!

            Best wishes

            Vladimir

              Dear Jonathan,

              I thank you for your constructive remarks on my essay.

              Indeed my problem is how to translate ideas in words....

              Maybe it is so that our "machines" cannot be brighter as their creators.

              But when I say that immediately I am aware that our non caused consciousness is like GOD and can create anything possible , also an entity that has more relations to Total Simultaneity (GOD?) then the limitations of causal beings can be aware of.

              In an article that I am preparing for COSMOLOGYI introduced an "Eternal Now Moment Hopper" a way to change time-life/lines , not comparable to time travelling but it has some parallels, I enclose the pre-view.(it is not yet accepted by now, but I await the okay) I wonder if you have some remarks.

              I answer on your thread, pls do the sma with your answers on mine. and thank you for your rating.

              best regards

              Wilhelmus

                Thanks for the nice essay. Play is an important aspect of innovation as you rightly point out. We all seem to know what play is, especially when children play, but what play is for adults is one of those kinds of words. Like defining what a game is, play is something that we seem to know, but then cannot really generalize.

                What is the difference between play and work? Oh, work is not fun...but then what if work is fun? Is it play or is it work? Some people say that what they do for work is fun and some people say what they do for work is not fun.

                The essence of your essay really is that a childlike approach to exploring the world can help us better understand that world. I daresay that I would even push it further and say that the way that we learn before we reach consciousness at 6-7, by play, is just as important as the way we learn after consciousness and the more structured play as we grow older.

                You use the word fun a lot in your descriptions of play since what is fun is usually an indication of what is play. However, some people have fun doing things that bore others to tears, and so the actions are not really the key. It is the desire and motivations that are the key.

                Implicit in your essay are desirability and motivation. It is by imagining futures that are desirable that we decide what is fun and what is play. But hunger and fear are also important determinants for predicting desirable futures. For science, curiosity is a much more important driver than fun or play, for example.

                Is curiosity about how the world works fun? I think so, but most people that I meet simply do not have much curiosity about how the world works. Instead, their curiosity is channeled into movies and books and UFOs and ancient aliens and so on. Is that fun misguided?

                And finally, what about playful behavior that injures others or damages property? Play is a useful allegory for a desirable future, but it does have its limitations. Like all behavior, play can be constructive and enlightening and play can also be destructive and abusive of others. Your doctrine of play should also address the dark side of human play.

                  Thank you so much Vladimir!

                  I am looking forward to reading your essay, hopefully still this weekend, but I appreciate the warm regard and thoughtful comments. I guess it didn't begin with Einstein, and that Newton and I are on the same page as well. It's nice to be in such esteemed company.

                  All the Best,

                  Jonathan