Sometime in the last half of the 20th Century, we lost the ability to play. Oh, we have sports, and games and other activities, but when was the last time you heard anyone older than 5 or 6 giggle while they were "horsing around?" What used to be an opportunity for friendly exercise by "playing" ball games has turned into a serious high-stakes challenge with advertising dollars dictating the "plays." We swim laps, we slam our opponents with a quick shot, we even run with scientific precision. But most of all, we follow the rules.
What might this have to do with physics? Quite a bit, as it turns out, since many of the greatest discoveries of our past have been made by people who liked to play. People made up their own games since there were no packaged, computerized, competitive rules laid out for them. It's been said that scientists are now finding whatever they expect to find in their research. While this might be dictated by the inherent nature of scientific experimentation as we know it, might it not also be due to something we've lost? The ability to play?
More than at any other time in history, scientists today are working on problems that demand large sums of money for lab equipment, personnel, and materials. They must appeal to the needs of those with the money to spend (government, corporations, organizations) and compete against a myriad of others who want that same money. They are required to develop a "prospectus" of sorts for each project they want to pursue. Then, if the funding is awarded, instead of spending time in the lab "goofing around" to see what answers might appear, scientists are expected to adhere to rigid timelines and to produce results at an expected rate. There is little opportunity to spend time with the "muse of ideas" in our modern research facilities.
So today, Sir Alexander Fleming would not be financed so he could "play with microbes" and draw pictures in his petri dish by moving germs around to make patterns of color and texture. Einstein would be expected to act like an adult and not spend a lot of time on "thought experiments." In sort, discoveries were often made when our greatest thinkers were simply hanging about, doodling, "playing" with ideas. Without these opportunities for play, what discoveries will we make in the future? As K.C. Cole says in Mind Over Matter (see previous article), "Being open to the unexpected is what play is all about."
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