LEGO and Philosophy

Roy T. Cook is CLA Scholar of the College and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Resident Fellow at the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science. He is the author of Paradoxes (Polity, 2013) and The Yablo Paradox (2014), the editor of The Arché Papers on the Mathematics of Abstraction (2007), and co-editor of The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach (Wiley Blackwell, 2012) and The Routledge Companion to Comics (2016). No matter how much LEGO he buys, he never seems to have enough headlight bricks. Sondra Bacharach is Senior Lecturer in the philosophy department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She works in philosophy of art and philosophy for children. She is co-editor of Collaborating Now: Art in the Twenty-first Century (2016) and is the former co-editor of the American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter. When she's not doing philosophy, she can be found building Classic Spaceships (Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!) with her kids' big box of LEGO.

"It's not just another brick in the toy chest." (The Star Tribune) "[LEGO and Philosophy] sets the stage for building future debates. If you have even the slightest inkling that something serious is going on in the LEGO world, something positive and potentially culturally transformative, then these collected essays provide no better starting place to start your own thinking about this." (New Elementary)

• Notes on Contributors ixIntroduction: Play Well, Philosophize Well! 1Sondra Bacharach and Roy T. CookPart I LEGO® and Creativity 51 Constructing Creativity 7Mary Beth Willard2 Building Blocks of Thought: LEGO® and the Philosophy of Play 17Tyler Shores3 LEGO® Formalism in Architecture 27Saul Fisher4 “That Was My Idea!”: LEGO® Ideas and Intellectual Property 39Michael GettingsPart II LEGO®, Ethics, and Rules 495 “You Know the Rules!” What’s Wrong with The Man Upstairs? 51Jon Robson6 Searching for “The Special”: The LEGO® Movie and the Value of (LEGO®) Persons 59Alexander Quanbeck7 LEGO® and the Social Blocks of Autonomy 69Eric Chelstrom8 Building and Dwelling with Heidegger and LEGO® Toys 79Ellen MillerPart III LEGO® and Identity 899 Ninjas, Kobe Bryant, and Yellow Plastic: The LEGO® Minifigure and Race 91Roy T. Cook10 Girl, LEGO® Friends is not your Friend! Does LEGO® Construct Gender Stereotypes? 103Rebecca Gutwald11 Representation in Plastic and Marketing: The Significance of the LEGO® Women Scientists 113Rhiannon Grant and Ruth Wainman12 Real Signature Figures: LEGO® Minifigures and the Human Individual 123Robert M. MentykaPart IV LEGO®, Consumption, and Culture 13313 LEGO® Values: Image and Reality 135Sondra Bacharach and Ramon Das14 Small Farms, Big Ideas: LEGO® Farm and Agricultural Idealism 145Craig Van Pelt15 The Reality of LEGO®: Building the Apocalypse 153David Lueth16 The American Archipelago: Touring the Nation at Miniland USA 163Samantha J. BoardmanPart V LEGO®, Metaphysics, and Math 17317 The Brick, the Plate, and the Uncarved Block: LEGO® as an Expression of Dao 175Steve Bein18 LEGO®, Impermanence, and Buddhism 185David Kahn19 LEGO® and the Building Blocks of Metaphysics 197Stephan Leuenberger20 What Can You Build? 207Bob Fischer21 Playing with LEGO® and Proving Theorems 217Fenner TanswellGlossary 227Alice Leber-Cook and Roy T. CookIndex 233