 Al-Ghazâlî’s understanding of the modalities developed in the context of Ash’arite kalâm and does not share the statistical model of Aristotle and Avicenna. Ash’arite kalâm developed an understanding that is closer to our modern view of the modalities as referring to synchronic alternative states of affairs. In the modern model, the notion of necessity refers to what obtains in all alternatives, the notion of possibility refers to what obtains in at least in one alternative, and that which is impossible does not obtain in any conceivable state of affairs (Knuuttila 1998, 145). Ash’arite kalâm pursued the notion that God is the particularizing agent (mukhassis) of all events in the world, who determines, for instance, when things come into existence and when they fall out of existence (Davidson 1987, 159–61, 176–80). The idea of particularization (takhsîs) includes implicitly an understanding of possible worlds that are different from this. The process of particularization makes one of several alternatives actual. In his Creed for Nizâm al-Mulk, al-Juwaynî explains the Ash’arite understanding of the modalities. Every sound thinking person finds within herself, “the knowledge about the possibility of what is possible, the necessity of what is necessary, and the impossibility of what is impossible” (al-Juwaynî 1948, 8–9). We know this distinction instinctively without learning it from others and without further inquiry into the world. It is an impulse (badîha) in our rational judgment (‘aql). Al-Juwaynî explains this impulse: