The Game of the Sphere or of the Universe — a Spiral Race Game from 17th century France

Abstract

Simple race games, played with dice and without choice of move, are known from antiquity. In the late 16th century, specific examples of this class of game emerged from Italy and spread rapidly into other countries of Europe. Pre-eminent was the Game of the Goose, which spawned thousands of variants over the succeeding centuries to the present day, including educational, polemical and promotional variants.

An Astronomical Card Game: Contents, Circulation and Public

“…These studies have brought to light a stunning richness of topics, contexts and social practices (for instance , Smoller 1986;Goodfellow 1998;Dove 2016;Norcia 2019). Nevertheless, to date no author has specifically investigated science-themed games, except for some papers analyzing a few, paradigmatic examples (Keene 2011;Seville 2016), and no attempt has been made to offer a systematic and exhaustive overview of these games.…”