Children learn some things best through exploration and play.

Jacob Bronowski is one of a great many scientists who have come to recognize that "all science is a form of play" (1973). His wonderful overview of the development of our species makes explicit the formal similarities between what scientists do and what children do. It is scientists' continued childlike ability to "play" with substance and speed, with the properties of matter and movement, that allows them to discover the properties of our world.

Other scientists have looked more closely at how children play, investigating its evolutionary value for our species, realizing that there is a connection between the fact that we are at the same time the most playful and the most adaptive of the species. One researcher defines play as "optimal generic learning by experimentation in a relaxed field" (Fagen, 1976). This experimentation in a relaxed field is how we most efficiently learn that in Bruner's sense, whether as a scientist or as a child.