Paper short abstract:

This paper takes the gyroscopic spinning-top as a case study to explore the ways in which playthings shape the thinking that they put into play.

Paper long abstract:

The gyroscope's historical affordance stems from particular properties of motion that its structural arrangement allows, something inherently intangible, however deeply rooted it is in the concrete.

The mismatch between the technological transparency that constitutes it and the perplexing phenomena that it performs makes the gyroscopic top a particularly evocative plaything.

This paper explores the object's affordances to action, perception and understanding under three headings: the 'go' of gyroscopic devices and operational mastery; the dynamical complexity of gyroscopic motion and paradoxical thinking; and gyroscopic metastability as a time-defying and gravity defying phenomenon.

It argues that the shape of thinking gyroscopic toys involves a particular haptic understanding, grounded in the concrete yet somehow always just beyond its reach. Both contained and projective, its concentration on an object, rather than defining it, unravels an every widening orbit around it.