playfulness and wonder

What really caught my eye in these chapters is this notion of playfulness. Wonder in this playful sense becomes a bit of a game between humans and nature where the two play off of each other. The wonder seems to come from the appearence of a game where humans are trying to one up nature by producing an imitation of what nature has despite the fact that it seems rather useless while nature seems to trying to one up humans by imitating the productions of humans. So you have humans who engineer an imitation of a duck and score the point and nature responds to the playful competition by producing an imitation of a painting of a cat or landscape. Back and forth both groups go showing off their skills of imitating the other and surprising each other with what the other is capable of doing. Humans walk away from this with wonder of how playful nature can be with them to produce imitations of the productions of humans that seem to have no function in nature nor an explanation for the reason of production. The wonder continues with the playful call to respond and one up nature through it's own show of imitation.