ABSTRACT
High in her spaceship, Venica would look down to see the earth as a ball. Other children, however, said that to see the earth one would definitely have to look up. These children maintained that the earth is not only round, but also completely solid. They would draw the earth as a circle. But when asked to show on their drawings where people live, far from locating their figures inside the circle or around its circumference, they would either place them on a horizontal line drawn beneath their depiction of the earth-ball or use the lower edge of the paper itself as a baseline, and place their figures on the border. At first, the experimenters were perplexed by this, as the following exchange with nine-year-old Darcy reveals. In response to initial requests, Darcy has drawn a round earth, and has added the moon and some stars. When the experimenter asks where people live, Darcy draws a house whose base lies along the lower border of the paper. The experimenter asks again, and Darcy draws another house. On the third request, Darcy eventually gives in to the experimenter’s implicit demands, rubs out one of her houses, and draws a stick figure upon her round earth (Figure 8.2b). This, however, only sparks off a further round of interrogation. ‘This house is on the earth isn’t it?’ says the experimenter, pointing to the sketch of the house that remains after the other was erased. ‘How come the earth here is flat but before you made it round?’ The following dialogue ensues:
Darcy: I don’t know. Experimenter: Is the earth really round? Darcy: No. Experimenter: It’s not really round. Well, what shape is it? Darcy: Yaa, it’s round. Experimenter: Then how come it looks flat here? Darcy: Because it’s on the ground. Experimenter: But why does that make it look flat? Darcy: Because the ground’s flat. Experimenter: But the shape of the earth is… Darcy: Round. (ibid.: 570)
To the experimenter it seemed that Darcy was being wilfully inconsistent, wavering between conceptions of the earth’s surface as round and flat. But it was in fact the experimenter who had thrown the whole exercise into confusion by insisting on using the word ‘earth’ for what Darcy clearly and consistently distinguished as the ground. Faced with this confusion, Darcy does not at first know how to respond. Then she admits that if the earth is understood in the specific sense in which the experimenter had just used the term, that is to denote the ground, then of course it is not round. Appearing to contradict herself, however, she actually regains her footing, reasserting that the earth is indeed round, by contrast to the flat ground. On her own terms she is, indeed, being thoroughly consistent. Along with other children who responded along similar lines, Darcy’s reasoning appears to be structured by what Vosniadou and Brewer call a ‘dual earth model’. According to this model there are two earths, ‘a round one which is up in the sky and a flat one where people live’ (ibid.: 550). Adherents of this model, like Darcy, generally use the word ‘earth’ only for
the former and ‘ground’ for the latter. Thus whereas adherents of the hollow earth reconcile their experience of living on the flat with their knowledge that the earth is round by putting the one inside the other, dual earthers keep the two strictly separate.
