Fifteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

This paper touches on the question of meaning making in the world. For many prominent social philosophers, language stands at the root of our capacity to perceive and/or interpret reality. For a few, such as John Searle, language is the fundamental way in which we bring much of reality into existence. Searle’s “social ontology” theory divides the world of reality into two distinct spheres: objective “brute facts” (e.g. rivers, stars, atoms, etc.) and subjective “social facts” (e.g. money, footballs, academic conferences, etc.). This view holds that without language, there is no social reality and no possibility of social institutions such as sport. Yet, we know from evolutionary biology that there was a time before the kind of complex language, Searle’s hypothesis demands. In this paper, I will propose an alternative view. Building on an idea first proposed in a footnote and only partly developed since by physical education and sport scholar R. Scott Kretchmar–that sport may, in fact, pre-date complex language–I explore how sport might plausibly have developed as a necessary prerequisite for complex language. The implications of this view are significant as it challenges the dominant discourse of sport as something unnecessary. If sport is, as I suggest, fundamental to the development of complex reality, it is thus fundamental to our capacity to shape reality itself. This helps to explain why so many people the world over seem to care so much about something contemporary society–and indeed many prominent scholars dismiss as gratuitous.