• egrets@lemmy.world
    432·
    30 days ago

    The problem with recognizing Pluto is that Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna, Ceres, Orcus, and perhaps also Salacia also should probably be included, and that makes for a nightmare of a mnemonic. As we all know, classification is decided on mnemonic plausibility.

      • lemmyartistforhire@lemmy.worldEnglish
        35·
        29 days ago

        What’s the problem with having many many planets in our solar system? You don’t have to remember them all.

        We also have many many stars in our galaxy. We don’t have to know their names for them to still be stars.

        • Klear@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          29 days ago

          You don’t ever see people calling for Ceres to be proclaimed planet, all they care about is Pluto.

          • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            29 days ago

            @lemmyartistforhire@lemmy.world is it better for space/societal advancement if we have a nice neat small finite number of planets in our solar system, if even politicians can remember how many there are so Earth feels a little less like a statistic?

            Kinda stretching here, IDK

          • lemmyartistforhire@lemmy.worldEnglish
            27·
            29 days ago

            I think Pluto having been widely regarded as a planet before and having a visible heart shape on it’s surface is an easier sell. I say they are both planets.

            What’s the problem with having many many planets in our solar system?

            You also can’t find a good problem with this, can you?

    • Guidy@lemmy.world
      85·
      30 days ago

      It’s only a problem when you reach a certain level of astronomical knowledge. 99% of us don’t and won’t give a shit and think the people who decided Pluto’s no longer a planet are simply assholes.

      All adults know what a “grandfather clause” is and are capable of applying that to Pluto.

      Pluto is and will always be Hot Shit.

        • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          29 days ago

          Technically, you don’t know Fonzie’s temperature. And before you go and say “human temperature,” the Fonz is a fictional character, so all bets are off.

      • lemmyartistforhire@lemmy.world
        23·
        29 days ago

        the people who decided Pluto’s no longer a planet

        Yes. Fuck Mike Brown. I don’t know why many people still let him dictate what to think of as a planet. The concept of “planet” is entirely man-made and doesn’t follow any god given or universal criteria. While some astronomers argue that our moon is a planet too, the current criteria would even de-classify earth as a planet, should it get knocked out of our solar system.

        I see Pluto as a Planet, and have yet to see a good argument against it.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
      65·
      29 days ago

      Yet Mercury is in the same category as Jupiter…as though they are similar in any way. “Planet” is one of the few times science has decided to change something for the sole purpose of keeping the Earth important in its classification. I suppose we could not have 15 or 20 or 40 planets because that would be confusing…yet we have almost 1000 moons. It is ONLY because it is the Earth’s classification…no other reason. It doesn’t make anything easier or less confusing.

      They could have easily made mercury, pluto, and a dozen others dwarf planets, Venus Earth and Mars terrestrial planets and the others gas planets… but that would demote Earth.

      Weird left over geocentrism remaining in science like it’s the 1300s.

    • lemmyartistforhire@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      29 days ago

      Pluto and the others are planets even without including them all in the mnemonic. The mnemonic is for the first 9 planets, just like you only remember the first few digits of pi.

          • turmacar@lemmy.world
            2·
            28 days ago

            The moons of Jupiter and Saturn were called satellite planets from their discovery until sometime in the 20th century.

            The first several asteroids were called planets, until enough were discovered that the term ‘asteroid’ was invented and they were renamed.

            The first Kuiper belt objects were called planets, until enough were discovered that it turns out Pluto is mostly just a particularly reflective example.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    161·
    29 days ago

    The meme does get at an important point though -

    Our classifications of things have no impact on the things themselves. They are descriptive, not prescriptive. We create the category “planet” as a useful tool for referring to certain categories of astronomical objects. These objects would exist whether we had words for them are not.

    There are patterns in what the word “planet” describes that would also be shared, whether all of those things were called “planets” are not, but the words themselves are just useful shorthands depending on the context that we use them in. The map is not the territory; the referent is not the reference.

    (This is also about sex/gender.)

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        2·
        29 days ago
        1. Compare knowing and saying:

        how many feet high Mont Blanc is

        how the word “game” is used

        how a clarinet sounds.

        If you are surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it, you are perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third.

        1. Consider this example. If one says “Moses did not exist”, this may mean various things. It may mean: the Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from Egypt–Or: their leader was not called Moses -Or: there cannot have been anyone who accomplished all that the Bible relates of Moses-Or: etc. etc. We may say, following Russell: the name “Moses”-can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as “the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness” , "the man who lived at that time and place and was then called 'Moses " “the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter” and so on. And according as we assume one definition or another the proposition "Moses did not exist? acquires a different sense, and so does every other proposition about Moses. -And if we are told “N did not exist”, we do ask: “What do you mean? Do you want to say . . . … Or . . . … etc.?” But when I make a statement about Moses, am I always ready to substitute some one of these descriptions for “Moses”? I shall perhaps say: By “Moses” I understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses, or at any rate a good deal of it. But how much? Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my proposition as false? Has the name “Moses” got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all possible cases? Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from under me and vice versa?

        Consider another case. When I say “N is dead”, then something like the following may hold for the meaning of the name “N”: I believe that a human being has lived, whom I (1) have seen in such-and-such places, who (2) looked like this (pictures), (3) has done such-and-such things, and (4) bore the name “N” in social life. Asked what I understand by “N”, I should enumerate all or some of these points, and different ones on different occasions. So my definition of “N” would perhaps be “the man of whom all this is true”. But if some point now proves false?-Shall I be prepared to declare the proposition “N is dead” false- even if it is only something which strikes me as incidental that has turned out false? But where are the bounds of the incidental?-If I had given a definition of the name in such a case, I should now be ready to alter it.

        And this can be expressed like this: I use the name “N” without a fixed meaning. But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.)

        Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don’t know, and so am talking nonsense? Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)

        Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          28 days ago

          iOS! Spotlight search on an iPhone.

          Tapping the short definition at the top produced the lengthier one. But nothing compares to the Oxford English Dictionary itself online! (Yay a local public library subscription)

          Anyway pretty UI eh?

          • pyre@lemmy.world
            2·
            28 days ago

            not a fan of the rest of the UI tbh but the typography on the dictionary is beautiful.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    64·
    29 days ago

    The good thing about Pluto is it’s a planet whether you believe in it or not.