The Genesis of Animal Play

The Genesis of Animal Play

Author: Gordon M. Burghardt

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0262025434

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A scientist examines the origins and evolutionary significance of play in humans and animals.


The Cambridge Handbook of Play

The Cambridge Handbook of Play

Author: Peter K. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1108135501

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Play takes up much of the time budget of young children, and many animals, but its importance in development remains contested. This comprehensive collection brings together multidisciplinary and developmental perspectives on the forms and functions of play in animals, children in different societies, and through the lifespan. The Cambridge Handbook of Play covers the evolution of play in animals, especially mammals; the development of play from infancy through childhood and into adulthood; historical and anthropological perspectives on play; theories and methodologies; the role of play in children's learning; play in special groups such as children with impairments, or suffering political violence; and the practical applications of playwork and play therapy. Written by an international team of scholars from diverse disciplines such as psychology, education, neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, this essential reference presents the current state of the field in play research.


Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation

Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation

Author: Paul Patrick Gordon Bateson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-07-11

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1107015138

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Examines the role of playfulness in animal and human development, highlighting its links to creativity and, in turn, to innovation.


Animal Tool Behavior

Animal Tool Behavior

Author: Robert W. Shumaker

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2011-05-02

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1421401282

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When published in 1980, Benjamin B. Beck’s Animal Tool Behavior was the first volume to catalog and analyze the complete literature on tool use and manufacture in non-human animals. Beck showed that animals—from insects to primates—employed different types of tools to solve numerous problems. His work inspired and energized legions of researchers to study the use of tools by a wide variety of species. In this revised and updated edition of the landmark publication, Robert W. Shumaker and Kristina R. Walkup join Beck to reveal the current state of knowledge regarding animal tool behavior. Through a comprehensive synthesis of the studies produced through 2010, the authors provide an updated and exact definition of tool use, identify new modes of use that have emerged in the literature, examine all forms of tool manufacture, and address common myths about non-human tool use. Specific examples involving invertebrates, birds, fish, and mammals describe the differing levels of sophistication of tool use exhibited by animals.


The Ambiguity of Play

The Ambiguity of Play

Author: Brian Sutton-Smith

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0674044185

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Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--The ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory


The Play of Animals

The Play of Animals

Author: Karl Groos

Publisher:

Published: 1898

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13:

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"In this volume Professor Groos makes a contribution to three distinct but cognate departments of inquiry: philosophical biology, animal psychology, and the genetic study of art. The world of play, to which art belongs, stands in most important and interesting contrast with the stern realities of life; yet there are few scientific works in the field of human play, and none at all in that of animal play--a fact to be accounted for, probably, by the inherent difficulties of the subject, both objective and subjective. The animal psychologist must harbour in his breast not only two souls, but more; he must unite with a thorough training in physiology, psychology, and biology the experience of a traveller, the practical knowledge of the director of a zoological garden, and the outdoor lore of a forester. And even then he could not round up his labours satisfactorily unless he were familiar with the trend of modern aesthetics. Groos holds play to be an instinct developed by natural selection, and to be on a level with the other instincts which are developed for their utility. Its utility is, in the main, twofold: First, it enables the young animal to exercise himself beforehand in the strenuous and necessary functions of its life and so to be ready for their onset; and, second, it enables the animal by a general instinct to do many things in a playful way, and so to learn for itself much that would otherwise have to be inherited in the form of special instincts; this puts a premium on intelligence, which thus comes to replace instinct"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).


Cephalopod Cognition

Cephalopod Cognition

Author: Anne-Sophie Darmaillacq

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-10

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1107015561

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Focusing on comparative cognition in cephalopods, this book illuminates the wide range of mental function in this often overlooked group.


Mahale Chimpanzees

Mahale Chimpanzees

Author: Michio Nakamura

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-09-10

Total Pages: 797

ISBN-13: 1107052319

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A major contribution to great-ape research, covering every aspect of the Mahale Mountain Chimpanzee Project to offer new, unique insights.


Religion in Human Evolution

Religion in Human Evolution

Author: Robert N. Bellah

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-09-15

Total Pages: 777

ISBN-13: 0674063090

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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal


How Language Makes Meaning

How Language Makes Meaning

Author: Herbert L. Colston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1108421652

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Explains the complexities of how language supports human social interaction using the framework of embodied cognition.