VI. Playing and Knowing
“For archaic man, doing and daring are power, but knowing is magical power. For him all particular knowledge is sacred knowledge—esoteric and wonder-working wisdom, because any knowing is directly related to the cosmic order itself.”
The riddle-solving and death-penalty motif features strongly in the chapter.
- Greek tradition: the story of the seers Chalcas and Mopsos.
Read more about this topic: Homo Ludens (book)
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or knowing:
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Negro history must be studied, not only because it is the history of over 19 millions, but American life as a whole cannot be understood without knowing it.”
—Dorothy Allen Conley (b. 1904)