 Aren’t there also ways the world could not have been? Some authors endorse the claim that anything is possible (e.g. Mortensen 1989). However, the majority of philosophers believe that not everything is possible, in the sense that some things just can’t happen. If I tell you that my college has a cupola which is both fully round and fully square, you are likely to reply, “it can’t be that way!”. So it seems that “‘ways’ talk goes both ways” (Beall and van Fraassen 2003: 86). If quantification on ways the world could have been should be taken at face value as providing evidence for possible worlds, then quantification on ways the world could not have been should be taken at face value as providing evidence for impossible worlds.