The actual problem here is weirdly aggressive nerds who are incapable of nuance, and insist that an astronomical classification (Pluto is not a planet by the IAU definition) should be used in non-astronomical contexts.
Historically and culturally, Pluto is considered a planet. An IAU classification shouldn't be used to try and retroactively change that, because the IAU does not have control over history and culture. It's a fun fact (did you know that Pluto is not classified as a planet by astronomers?) not a diktat.
Similarly, a banana is 'officially' a berry, which means that it is classified as a berry by botanists. This does not mean it is considered a berry in any other contexts. If you told someone you had made a berry crumble and it was filled with bananas, you would look strange. We have countless examples of this (often focused around food): a tomato does not belong in a fruit salad no matter what botanists say.
Different terms are used with different specificity in different settings. Language and culture and [older disciplines] are not governed by the rules of [newer disciplines or bodies]. If people with 'I love space' t-shirts would stop "um actually"-ing, no one would have a problem.
> Historically and culturally, Pluto is considered a planet.
A very brief period of history. Give it 50 years and the number of people who will call it a planet will be close to 0.
Let's not overstate Pluto's significance in culture. People call it a planet only because that's what they were taught in school. Not because of other (very few) cultural references. As it has been dropped from the curriculum, so shall it be dropped from people's minds.
Compared to the other planets it's rarely referred to in stories, etc. It has very little significance in today's culture beyond the fact that it was taught in school.
That's not the case for something like Jupiter. If they decided tomorrow that gas giants are no longer planets, it will remain in arts and culture. Pluto? Highly unlikely.
I don't think my kid knows about Pluto. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts and pistachios are culinary nuts but NOT botanical nuts.
Botanical berries: Bananas, tomatoes, grapes, cucumbers, eggplants, avocados and peppers, but NOT strawberries, raspberries, blackberries or mulberries.
Scientists really should have made up their own categories instead of using our words.
"Scientists really should have made up their own categories instead of using our words."
If they could do it all over again probably most of them would. The sciences all grew organically too. Some of these things like "berries" aren't even just the product of one reclassification, they're the product of several over the course of decades or centuries, which is how they get so common-sense silly over time.
We had the perfect opportunity to introduce new names when the IAU created the "dwarf planet" classification in 2006. That was literally the perfect time to do it all over.
> Scientists really should have made up their own categories instead of using our words.
Doesn't really matter. The public would end up taking science words for their own purposes to sound legitimate. Look at how "quantum" and "energy" is used in alternative medicine.
They really are the “epicenter” of the problem
Well, the thing is, nobody got told, out of nowhere, that the “honorable strawberries” were now called simply “mildly honored straw,” because a committee of so-called experts had expressed their will, and that now everybody had to say “mildly honored straw” instead of “honorable strawberries,” or else they would be *incorrect*, because the science league said so.
The word “planet” signifying a certain reverence, and the fact that a scientific body was now policing everyday language — for the apparently petty reason that we should not honor Pluto as we once did — it was quite a misstep for how people in the public might view science going forward. Unless, perhaps, the idea was to make people more skeptical of scientific results and statements.
The alternative was to announce "we now have 10 more planets, and there are probably a bunch more, and we'll probably never really get a definitive number".
That would also have had an impact on the public view of science. Perhaps not as bad, but it would have had an impact.
No, the alternative would be to make up some latin sounding words for planets, dwarf planets, etc. and leave the vulgar planet alone to the standard 9 that we all know are planets.
No that would be an argument to return to the original definition of planets (highly visible celestial objects that migrate across the sky, i.e. the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).
If you believe in the "standard 9" you're just insisting on returning to a scientific definition of planets but one that is frozen on our scientific understanding from a few decades ago...
As you can see, there are many valid ways to go about understanding what a planet is in a cultural sense.
Right, and then everybody would be in the comments complaining about how "everybody is using a new term for planet and it's ridiculous, just call them planets". It's not a battle that can be won.
This is what should have happened. (And it’s not too late — Pluto will remain with us for a while yet.)
Planets predate modern astronomy. You have to negotiate with the public if you want to change what “planet” means. To most people, in most contexts, it means 8 or 9 specific things that they have specific ideas about, not a theoretical category of infinite objects.
> Planets predate modern astronomy.
If we're segmenting off "modern astronomy" then Pluto wasn't even discovered yet.
And we discovered Ceres long before Pluto. It would be pretty rude to keep excluding Ceres just because we knew about the asteroid belt before we knew about the Kuiper belt.
It’s not about being rude to Pluto so much as about being rude to me.
I’m not a member of the IAU. I don’t adhere to their linguistic prescriptivism, and nobody should expect that I will. Some of their own members do not — the article here explains.
Are you a member of the IAU?
I didn't say anything about rudeness to Pluto, I was talking about Ceres. I like Ceres. I think it deserves some recognition for being known before even Neptune.
By all means, call it what you like and honor it however you like.
I’m not the IAU, and I have no interest whatsoever in emboldening thousands of people to smugly harass you or anybody else about it.
Few things sound more like more science than "planets". Telling people "Well actually 'planet' isn't a scientific term, it's a historical / cultural term" will also significantly reduce their trust and interest in science.
Hey, don’t blame me, blame the IAU for opening that can of worms. I’m just happy calling Pluto a “planet” and would rather the IAU had left me in peace — they’re the ones who want to argue with me about what words I’m supposed to say and when I’m supposed to say them.
I’d encourage you to think about the impact of science fiction on interest in science. Culture is an extremely powerful force. I don’t think your concern would bear out.
There was no do nothing option, the IAU didn't open the can of words. 10 new objects that would be called planets under the old definition were discovered. "Doing nothing" would have led to far more significant changes.
Even if they had to do something, they didn’t need to do what they ended up going for — it was a pretty bad option from a scientific standpoint and a needlessly controversial one.
As the article here explains, the 2006 IAU definition doesn’t really make sense or function as a useful model for what a planet is.
> The actual problem here is weirdly aggressive nerds who are incapable of nuance
This is the actual problem everywhere.
I wonder how happy each group would be by this solution. Planet as a scientific and non-scientific usage.
Conclusively, science class would not teach Pluto as a planet (it should after all stick to the science) and English class will discuss the cultural impact of planet Pluto! Maybe write poems about the importance and impact of 9 word mnemonics? Sounds fun.
My headcanon is that people would hate it so so much! I can't wait to see that as a distant observer.
This would be a really good discussion topic in schools.
People need to understand the dynamic between science and society, because that is an important part of how the world works today.
Pluto is an exemplar.
And also, the value of culture. It might not be a scientific result, but it still shapes our experience of the world. Pluto is beloved.
Pluto makes for a great lesson about science itself. Our view of the universe we live in changes over time as we get more information about it. Children should learn to expect that and to understand that it isn't a bad thing, or a flaw with science, but a vital part of the process and when it happens things are working as intended. That means that today Pluto isn't a planet, even though for a small time it used to be considered one, because we learned more about the bodies in our solar system and it no longer made sense to call Pluto a planet. We can explain to children why it shows up in our history, and how we've moved on.
It honestly doesn't have to be a bunch of drama. The problem will pretty much go away after the current generation who grew up learning about Pluto as a planet dies off and gets replaced by a generation who always knew that there were only 8 planets in our solar system. Hopefully they'll also be better prepared to accept changes that come from better understanding.
> Our view of the universe we live in changes over time as we get more information about it.
But that’s not what happened here. The definition was changed. We didn’t learn anything new about Pluto that made us say “ah, we thought Pluto had a solid core but apparently it doesn’t, so it’s not a planet”. All the relevant facts about Pluto remained the same. The reason why it’s no longer considered a planet is because of the term ‘planet’, not because of Pluto.
We didn't learn much more about Pluto, other than it wasn't as unique as we once thought. We learned a lot more about other bodies in the Kuiper belt though. By our old classification, suddenly it looked like there could be hundreds of "planets" in our solar system. Our improved understanding of the nature of the Kuiper belt and its inhabitants caused us to reassess which types of features were useful to distinguish a planet from the vast number of smaller objects in our solar system.
I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. I’d have to point out that Pluto both is and is not a planet, depending on the context — it depends on whom you ask and the situation in which you ask.
What would you say to scientists and laypersons who consider Pluto to be a planet? How would you persuade them to your own viewpoint? Please give at least three examples and use at least three paragraphs.
Pluto is a dwarf planet. It feels like less of a "is and is not" situation, and more of an "isn't, but was once thought to be" situation.
Some people remember being told that it was a planet when they were kids and they cling to that even though we've learned that it doesn't make sense to call it a planet anymore.
Apart from that it shows up as a planet in literature, almost all of which was written before we knew better, just like how the idea of earth being at the center of the universe shows up in literature and was once a part of our culture. The geocentric model had passionate holdouts too, but we've mostly moved on from that idea since and I think we're better off for it.
For scientists and laypersons who aren't just holding onto "planet" for sentimental reasons, I'd recommend the book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming"
A geocentric model is observably incorrect.
The word “planet” is neither true nor false. Different people use it to refer to different things.
Kind of like the word “tree.” Some things are trees and some things are not — and it really depends on whom you ask and when you ask them. Most people are able to get along and allow people to refer to whatever trees they want to, because it’s a free country and it really doesn’t make sense to try to control other people over something like that.
> Pluto makes for a great lesson about science itself.
I disagree. Quibbling about a definition like that is like quibbling about whether a certain bird is a black-crowned Night-Heron or a black-crowned Night Heron (without the second hyphen), which is a real controversy that took place.
I suppose it shows a socially constructed, human aspect of science, but it really has very little to do with actually understanding the universe. The universe doesn’t care about our arbitrary stamp-collection-style classification of objects. There’s no equation or physical theory that describes the difference in any meaningful way.
In a sense you're right, the need to classify things is really for our convenience. Those classifications can be extremely helpful though and it's for that reason that we try to come up with good systems of classification and re-evaluate what goes where as we learn more.
The universe doesn’t care about our arbitrary stamp-collection-style classification of objects, anymore than it cares about where elements sit on the periodic table, but for us humans having things classified and ordered is a big deal. It's our constant arbitrary naming and organizing and classifying that allows letters to get delivered to my house and packets to reach my network. It gives us more precise language and enables better focus on what matters. It helps build a foundation for teaching and research. It helps to catalogue all we've learned. While you'll find plenty of ego fueled petty squabbles around the naming and classifying of things, it's still a pretty big part of what science does and we'd struggle to teach or coordinate any sort of meaningful science without it.
Which would make the article's subjects "weirdly aggressive nerds who are incapable of nuance, and insist that" a non-astronomical definition be used in an astronomical context.
While reading your comment it occurred to me that virtually all reporting on (or talking about) science involves applying it to an unsuitable context. Schrödinger's cat is probably the most prolific example of this.
Scientists are constantly trying to encroach on areas that aren’t the domain of science in an attempt to expand their power, so this confusion is unavoidable and indeed deliberate.
You’ve explained something very well that I hope certain groups of people will try to internalize.
The term "fish" is a case in point. Traditionally, the term means a creature which lives underwater, which would include whales and dolphins, and indeed used to, despite being mammals.
It gets worse. Whales and dolphins are more closely related to certain fish than those fish are related to some other fish. (As are we by the way.) There are also some fish, such as lungfish or certain eels which can spend more time out of water than whales and dolphins can. Some fish can even breathe air, which undermines another assumption about whales etc.
For some reason, I rarely hear fewer people objecting to jellyfish or shellfish being referred to as fish, even though these are more distantly related to fish than mammals are.
So biologically, the term "fish" doesn't make much sense.
Your point is fishy. But if the IAU definition changes to "a body orbiting a star", we can rename them to "paparazzi".
My understanding was part of the definition was changed thereby recategorizing Pluto?