Push-pin was an English child's game played from the 16th until the 19th centuries. It is also known as "put-pin", and it is similar to Scottish games called "Hattie" and "Pop the Bonnet".[1] In philosophy it has been used as an example of a relatively worthless form of amusement.
Rules
1777 etching depicting a couple playing a game of push-pin
In push-pin each player sets one pin (needle) on a table and then tries to push his pin across his opponent's pin.[2]
The game is played by two or more players.
In "Pop the Bonnet", or "hattie", players place two pins on the brim of a hat. They take turns tapping or "popping" on the sides of the hat trying to cause pins to cross one another. Whichever player causes them to cross takes the pins.[3][4] This was a form of gambling, where a player could win or lose their pins, which were valuable as a rare imported commodity at that time.
Boys and men might stash several pins on a sleeve or lapel to be prepared to play.[5]
References in philosophy
Push-pin was immortalized by Jeremy Bentham when he wrote in The Rationale of Reward that: "Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry."[6]John Stuart Mill, who disagreed with Bentham on this point, misquotes Bentham as saying, "quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry".[7] Mill's version is now widely attributed to Bentham.
The phrase comes up often in the work of R. S. Peters, a British philosopher of education, who uses some version of the phrase "why poetry is preferable to push-pin" as a way of drawing attention to the question of what is educationally worthwhile. For Peters, only intrinsically worthwhile activities warrant inclusion into the school curriculum. If a case could be made for the intrinsic educational value of push-pin (or a similar pastime), it could warrant inclusion.
See for example "The Philosopher's Contribution to Educational Research," Educational Philosophy and Theory 1(2), October 1969, page 3.
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