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What's That, Mummy? A child's adventure with Philosophy

by Edward R. W. Makhene

94 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1209; ISBN 1-4120-0841-7; US$14.00, C$16.50, EUR11.50, £8.50

This philosophical dialogue attempts to answer meaningfully the most frequently and persistently asked question by all children as they learn to conceptualize and categorize.

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About the Book This book relates the daily challenges faced by children as they learn to categorize different objects around them and to use concepts like 'truth', 'good', 'death', 'time' and 'soul'. In the process they come to realize the unlimited scope of their simple question: "what's that?" The child's simple logic says Melissa's big sister, Sally, does not wear pull up diapers because only little girls wear those kinds of diapers. Deceiving appearances like mirages and dreams teach children to examine critically all their perceptions, so that they can know how to separate true perceptions from false ones. Recognizing the difference between believing and knowing that two and two make four also helps them in their search for truth as they learn to think about what is believed or known to be in the world. Their simple concepts of induction and causality help them to anticipate the results of their activities: windows break when baseballs are thrown around carelessly; chairs will not disintegrate when we sit on them if they have not done so on many previous occasions. Children should learn to live with the unpleasant consequences of their unwise choices. Their childish but puzzling questions about time are also addressed: how time is supposed to move, why it is sometimes said to move slowly or fast, and why time is said to be one, but different in different localities. They discover that helping others and spreading happiness around gives meaning to their lives and to the lives of other people, and they learn to appreciate all of nature.

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About the Author

Edward Makhene is a practicing Pediatrician with a BA, BSc, and MA from the University of South Africa. He pursued post-graduate research at Edinburgh University, Scotland for his MA dissertation: Objects and Things- A Philosophical Analysis. He recieved his medical training from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and his Pediatric training from Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. His other book is Mind your P's and Q's- Philosophy Goes to High School.