Abstract
This paper contextualizes the topic of play as an essential aspect of homo ludens (Huizinga 1949, Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. Abingdon: Routledge). I explore play as an abductive, semiotic process and phenomenological event according to Peirce’s categories of experience known as Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. We find that play is an integral aspect of human learning and, in some of its manifestations, can be linked to the sacred dimension of human existence. My method of analysis is to combine the theoretical insights of Charles S. Peirce (particularly his notion of musement as pure play) and communication theorist Gregory Bateson’s ideas about serious play in social interactions. We learn to take play seriously given that it simultaneously brings us to the threshold of both ineffability and intelligibility. We also learn something new about the sacrality of human learning as a reflection of what Peirce calls the absolute mind (2010 [1892], The law of mind. In The Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition, volume 8 [1890–1892], 135–157. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). I advocate that play and learning are thus sacred or integral to human growth and evolution.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Contemporary approaches to a pedagogy of process
- Signs as functions: Edusemiotic and ontological foundations for a semiotic concept of a sign
- Edusemiotics as process semiotics: Towards a new model of semiosis for teaching and learning
- The implications for education of Peirce’s agapist principle
- Writing and Différance
- Seeing through the metaphor: The OECD quality toolbox for early childhood
- Values, edusemiotics, and intercultural dialogue: From Russia with questions
- Usage de l’objet, signification et émergence de la conscience à l’étape préverbale du développement: Une perspective édusémiotique
- Les intuitions édusémiotiques des grands pédagogues : Engagement sémiotique, théorie de l’enquête et narrativité
- Edusemiotics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental semiotics
- Edusemiotics of meaningful learning experience: Revisiting Kant’s pedagogical paradox and Greimas’ semiotic square
- Can design inquiry advance edusemiotics? Rethinking factual information and imaginative interpretation
- Monstrous hermeneutics: Learning from diagrams
- Learning to take play seriously: Peirce, Bateson, and Huizinga on the sacrality of play
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Contemporary approaches to a pedagogy of process
- Signs as functions: Edusemiotic and ontological foundations for a semiotic concept of a sign
- Edusemiotics as process semiotics: Towards a new model of semiosis for teaching and learning
- The implications for education of Peirce’s agapist principle
- Writing and Différance
- Seeing through the metaphor: The OECD quality toolbox for early childhood
- Values, edusemiotics, and intercultural dialogue: From Russia with questions
- Usage de l’objet, signification et émergence de la conscience à l’étape préverbale du développement: Une perspective édusémiotique
- Les intuitions édusémiotiques des grands pédagogues : Engagement sémiotique, théorie de l’enquête et narrativité
- Edusemiotics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental semiotics
- Edusemiotics of meaningful learning experience: Revisiting Kant’s pedagogical paradox and Greimas’ semiotic square
- Can design inquiry advance edusemiotics? Rethinking factual information and imaginative interpretation
- Monstrous hermeneutics: Learning from diagrams
- Learning to take play seriously: Peirce, Bateson, and Huizinga on the sacrality of play