Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
laziness, impatience, and hubris
 
PerlMonks  

Re^2: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?

by chacham (Prior)
on Mar 11, 2017 at 18:12 UTC ( [id://1184284]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
in thread Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?

We constantly redefine our world based on new information.

But what's the point?

When classification for the purpose of helping or understanding, reclassification helps. But what does reclassifying what a planet is help? Classification for the sake of classification doesn't seem to be very popular.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Should Pluto Get Its Planethood Back?
by InfiniteSilence (Curate) on Mar 30, 2017 at 16:24 UTC

    But what does reclassifying what a planet is help?

    Reclassification becomes necessary when our thinking (or models, if you will) on a certain subject cannot jive or be sustained given the new findings. (Re)classification is going on all of the time. There is already substantial resistance to it since doing so means rerunning potentially thousands of experiments and rewriting a very many papers/textbooks on anything involving it. Imagine how many things had to be rewritten/done when Einstein's theories were verified!

    Let me be clear that there is no classification for its own sake going on. The sheer amount of work and potential embarrassment involved if your findings are unsound is enough to keep most people in the scientific community from doing virtually anything trivial.

    Celebrate Intellectual Diversity

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://1184284]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others sharing their wisdom with the Monastery: (5)
As of 2024-03-28 22:32 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found