Opus 2022-215: Get Inside the Box

I was watching my grandson “read” a book.  Actually, he was reading more than one.  The first was impressive.  The second he held upside down.  It isn’t as if he was looking at a page of print.  These were pictures with a few words.  It didn’t seem to bother him that the animals were standing on their heads.  I found myself wondering at what age he would begin to notice.

That of course made me start wandering about all the people around me that don’t seem to notice that the world is upside down.  My grandson is two and a half.  He is able to discern that the wheels on a car go down.  He put together a wooden train with the engine first.  He never tries to pour tea into an upside down cup.  Yet he still is not bothered by upside down pictures.  Does this mean that he has not yet learned to think inside the box?  What about people who know enough to put on a jacket when it is cold but think that cold weather is a sign of global warming?  In history they probably read about the vast herds of buffalo that covered the middle of the country but they worry about cow farts destroying life on earth.  

There are times when I think I am going to need to stop watching my grandchildren so much.  Probably not.  If nothing else it is a way of being reminded how above average they are.  The big question is, “Heredity or environment?”

homo unius libri