A study of what it means to play. The book explores play theory as elaborated and debated in disciplines from biology and psychology to mathematics, and analyzes the implications of play in areas such as child development and the Western work ethic, examining the values dictating forms of play.

This work reveals more distinctions and disjunctions than affinities, with one striking exception: however different their descriptions and interpretations of play, each rhetoric reveals a quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility. In light of this, Sutton-Smith suggests that play might provide a model of the variability that allows for natural selection. As a form of mental feedback, play might nullify the rigidity that sets in after successful adaption, thus reinforcing animal and human variability. Further, he shows how these discourses, despite their differences, might offer the components for a new social science of play.