Gopnik's Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?

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For centuries, people’s life have been based on religious beliefs until a new scientific window has taken its place for many people. Scientists have created a possible world of looking at things from a scientific window where they believe it is based on facts and evidence and religion is not. These two possibility of worlds of religion and science are related to Alison Gopnik’s essay, “Possible Worlds: Why Do Children Pretend?” Gopnik speaks of the possible worlds people create with their own mind and counterfactual thoughts. She studied children can think counterfactually of the past or future can create a possible world. Gopnik also notices that using causal knowledge is an attribution to creating possible worlds. As people use their knowledge …show more content…
One thinks that science is not the only possible world there can be, a person’s mind starts to explore different possibilities where it can create multiple possible worlds. Thinking counterfactually takes a person’s mind to look at things from different windows and the knowledge they have creates more possibilities. As Gopnik states that, “If causal knowledge and counterfactual thinking go together, then this might explain how young children have the parallel ability to generate counterfactuals and to explore possible worlds”(175). Having knowledge is being aware and open minded by experience of being in this world where it allows the mind to think counterfactually. Gopnik observes that children as well as adults can use counterfactual thoughts and knowledge to look for different possibilities. Such as a person with knowledge of science thinks of different possibilities and what is further than science. Those questions of what is beyond of the reason of science is another possible world that one creates. The possible world of what is the other explanation of how Earth was created besides the scientific one. Knowledge has made us aware of the scientific window but as Goodall questions in her essay what is beyond the science which, “The Big Bang theory is yet another example of the incredible, the awe-inspiring ability of the human mind to learn about seemingly unknowable phenomena in the beginning of time. Time as we know it, or think we know it. But what about before time? And what about beyond space?”(149). The majority of scientist believe in the Big Bang theory and evolution, but Goodall questions what happened before the Big Bang theory. What was out there before the science? With causal knowledge of science Goodall thinks counterfactually creating a possible world of the unknown. She is a scientist herself where she look a things from

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