Dr_Matt said:
Captain Blackout said:
The question at hand here is a philosophical one, not scientific.
The question of whether or not Pluto is a planet is purely scientific - philosophy doesn't come into it. Unless you're refering to a different question, of course.
Anytime you are talking about definitions, philosophy of language comes into it. You can claim it's purely scientific all you want but until your definition for planet is an established mathematical formula based on the physics of the situation i.e. Newton and Einstein's formula's for gravity you are stuck using tools that can be analyzed by linguists.
The definition of planet hadn't been established until
after Pluto was discovered, at least according to this thread. One of the first rules of language is that usage determines definition. Pluto was called a planet, and so it was for
everyone. Once scientists realized Pluto was not a solitary object or system in it's orbit around the sun they decided that planet had, effectively, become to open and broad. They'd either have to tweak it or they would have other difficulties. So, they fixed the definition of planet so that every object in the Kupier belt would not be a planet. A reasonable thing to do. It doesn't change the fact that until that point Pluto was a planet by usage of the term. That is how language works.
Scientists want clear categories. That makes sense. The chosen boundaries for those categories are chosen, and as such arbitrary. Instead of saying Pluto isn't a planet, scientists could have said "Solitary objects or systems that orbit a star in these types of orbits are major planets, objects that do these other things (I.e. Kupier belt objects) are minor planets. Pluto would still be a planet, albeit a minor one, along with everything else in Kupier belt.
In computer science there's a concept: Do not 'special case' your programs. Algorithms should be created such that you avoid this practice. It doesn't always work (I'm looking at you MS, you lazy bastards). In science the same concept applies, which generally is fine. However it's also not always necessary. Pluto could've been called a planet as a special case, in honor of it's discovery, with the rest of Kupier belt still being excluded. Scientists don't like to do this too often (which makes a hell of a lot of sense). For over half of the respondents however, Pluto is still a planet by usage of the terms involved. It wouldn't be the first time a term in the general public had a different definition than it does within scientific terminology. For me and others like me, Pluto is the 'honorary' planet of the Kupier belt. That doesn't change its scientific definition, just as a scientific definition doesn't change the status of a term in the general public. Usage of the term does that.
Because scientists refuse to bend on this point, I suspect eventually few if anyone will be calling Pluto a planet down the road. At that point, it really won't be a planet in almost any sense (except that it had been one in the past) since no one will be using the term that way.
Just for further consideration there are terms in various fields (I can't think of any right now, I just woke up) that had precise definitions but due to usage by the general populace those terms came to mean something more or something else, and those terms made into established dictionaries as such.
