Episode 16

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Published on:

8th Jun 2026

Is Science a Game?

Today I'm joined by two social scientists to address the question: is science a game? Michael Penkler, Stefan Sulzenbacher, and Stephan Voss recently published an article on this topic: Playing science: representing and doing research in board games. After a brief discussion of the way that philosophers have considered science a game, the article looks at 3 board games that simulate science.

Michael and Stefan join me to discuss their article, and what looking at science as a game can teach us about how science works.

Here's a link to the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2026.2630948

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About the Podcast

Plumbing Game Studies
A Games and Philosophy Podcast
Philosophy is like plumbing for ideas - it makes connections and keeps everything flowing. In this podcast, Graham and his guests are doing some philosophical plumbing for game studies. We'll be asking questions like:

Why are philosophers always talking about games? Is philosophy itself a game? How can we use games to understand philosophy - and how can we use philosophy to understand games?

This podcast will use philosophy to study games and games to study philosophy. Anyone interested in philosophy, games, and how they interact should enjoy it!

Remember: the unexamined game is not worth playing

About your host

Profile picture for Graham Culbertson

Graham Culbertson

Graham Culbertson is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Games Studies Initiative of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC, Chapel Hill.

You may know him from such podcasts as Everyday Anarchism and Left on the Table.

You can reach him at graham.culbertson@unc.edu.