Play (redirected from playing along)

play

In zoology, actions that have all the elements of purposeful behaviour but are performed for no apparent reason. Play has been documented only among mammals and birds. It is most common among immature animals, but adult animals also play. Horses, cattle, and other ungulates run and kick up their heels even when not fleeing from predators or defending themselves. Dogs adopt an aggressive posture to entice others to join in mock combat. Otters are well known for their mud sliding. Male birds may spontaneously perform their territorial songs when there is no intruding rival.

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play

1. a dramatic composition written for performance by actors on a stage, on television, etc.; drama

2. 

a. the performance of a dramatic composition

b. (in combination): playreader

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play [plā]

(mechanical engineering)

Free or unimpeded motion of an object, such as the motion between poorly fitted or worn parts of a mechanism.

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play

The separation between moving parts to reduce friction.

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(language, music)

PLAY - A language for real-time music synthesis. 1977. ["An Introduction to the Play Program", J. Chadabe ete al, Computer Music J 2,1 (1978)].

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Play 

a type of nonproductive activity motivated not by its result but by the process itself. Play has existed throughout man’s entire history, interweaving with magic, rituals and cults, sports, military and other training, and art, particularly in its dramatic forms. Play is also characteristic of the higher animals. Cultural historians, ethnologists, psychologists (especially child psychologists), historians of religion, scholars of the arts, and researchers in sports and military affairs all study play. In mathematical game theory, play is defined as the mathematical model of a situation of conflict. The origin of play was considered to lie in magic and cult needs or in the innate biological necessities of the organism; it was also deduced from labor processes (G. V. Plekhanov, Letters Without an Address).

Play is connected to both training and relaxation because it simulates conflicts that are difficult or impossible to solve in the practical sphere of activity. Therefore, play is not only physical training but also the means of psychological preparation for future life situations. As an abstract model of conflict, play is easily turned into a form for expressing social contradictions—for example, the transformation of sports “fans” at the stadium into political parties in medieval Byzantium or children’s games as models of social conflicts in the adult world.

Play is related to art through the psychological orientation of the player, who simultaneously believes and does not believe in the reality of the conflict being performed, and through the corresponding dual character of his behavior. The question of the correlation of play and art was raised by I. Kant and given philosophical and anthropological substantiation by F. Schiller, who saw in play a specifically human form of vital activity: “a man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is fully a man only when he plays” (Sobr. soch., vol. 6, Moscow, 1957, p. 302). The genetic connection of art and play is likewise noted in positivistic conceptions of the origin of art —for example, in A.N. Veselovskii’s theory of syncretic primitive art and of the origin of art in rite and pageant.”

Both play and art, directed at mastering the world, possess a common property—they propose solutions not in the practical but in the conditional symbolic sphere, which can be used then as a model for practical behavior in the real world. There is, however, an essential difference between play and art. Play represents the mastery of a skill, a form of training, and a modeling of an activity and is characterized by the presence of a system of rules.

IU. M. LOTMAN

The German philosopher and psychologist K. Groos (1899) developed the first fundamental concept of play in psychology: in the play of animals, he saw the preliminary adaptation (“pre-exercise”) of the instincts to the conditions of future life. Before Groos, the English philosopher H. Spencer had viewed play as a manifestation of “surplus energy.” The theory of the Austrian psychologist K. Biihler on “functional pleasure” as the internal subjective motive for play was an important amendment to Groos’ teaching. The Dutch zoopsychologist F. Buytendijk proposed a theory opposed to Groos’: he thought that, rather than instincts, it was the more general primordial drives, which are beyond instincts, that underlay play (the drive for liberation, the drive to merge with one’s surroundings, and the drive for repetition). In the psychoanalytical conception of the Austrian physician S. Freud, play is regarded as wish fulfillment.

In Soviet psychology, the approach to play as a sociohistorical phenomenon was developed by L.S. Vygotskii, A.N. Leont’ev, and D.B. El’konin. Children’s games, in particular, are regarded as a way of including the child in the world of human actions and relationships. Children’s games arise at the stage of social development when highly evolved forms of labor prevent the child’s direct participation in labor at the same time as his upbringing creates a yearning for a joint life with adults.

REFERENCES

Plekhanov, G.V. Soch., vol. 14. Moscow, 1925. Pages 54–64.
Leont’ev, A.N. Problemy razvitiia psikhiki. Moscow, 1971.
Groos, K. Die Spiele der Tiere. Jena, 1896.
Groos, K. Die Spiele des Menschen. Jena, 1899.
Biihler, K. Die Krise der Psychologic Jena, 1929.
Buytendijk, F.J. Wesen und Sinn des Spiels. Berlin, 1934.
Huizinga, j. Homo ludens. London, 1949.

I. B. DAUNIS