To Laia, Margot and all the children.
"Every study undertaken by man was the genuine outcome of curiosity, a kind of game. All the data of natural science, which are responsible for man’s domination of the world, originated in activities that were indulged in exclusively for the sake of amusement. When Benjamin Franklin drew sparks from the tail of his kite he was thinking as little of the lightning conductor as Hertz, when he investigated electrical waves, was thinking of radio transmission. Anyone who has experienced in his own person how easily the inquisitiveness of a child at play can grow into the life work of a naturalist will never doubt the fundamental similarity of games and study. The inquisitive child disappears entirely from the wholly animal nature of the mature chimpanzee." Konrad Lorenz
“Humans have this developed brain, which is three times as great in size as its nearest rival and has given us new knowledge (including that of our inevitable death), best of all, however, is the gift of immaturity itself, which has enabled us to retain in our best, most human, moments the capacity for play. In man or perhaps we should say, rather in the best of men, though indeed in the majority of women, the capacity is retained throughout life. It is in fact only those who have failed, one way or another, in their manhood or womanhood, who become our penny-dreadfuls, our gorillas and baboons.” Joseph Campbell
"A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play." Friedrich Nietzsche
This is an homage to play.
© Daniel Botelho
