So Cambridge University has accepted £4 million from the makers of Lego (snort) to fund a Lego chair (Argos sells a kit at £8.99) and a research centre into the importance of play (titter). One must not laugh (shriek). Aristotle (384–322 bc) might have approved — in part.
At the start of his ground-breaking treatise on animal form and function, Aristotle pointed out that there was something marvellous in every aspect of the natural world. He concluded that ‘we must not recoil childishly from the examination of the humbler animals… just as Heraclitus is said to have spoken to visitors who hesitated to go in when they saw him warming himself by the fire in the kitchen, telling them not to be afraid to enter, since there were gods there too, so we should approach the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for in all of them we will find something natural and something beautiful.
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