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:
“Someday our grandchildren will look up at us and say, “Where were you, Grandma, and what were you doing when you first realized that President Reagan was, er, not playing with a full deck?””
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)