If we don't stand up for the rights of dwarf planets, who will?

[Rule of Reason Blog]

By Nicholas Provenzo from The Rule of Reason,cross-posted by MetaBlog

This is amusing. Back in September, Gus Van Horn blogged about a first grade teacher who got her students to start a school-wide petition to protest the demotion of Pluto to "dwarf planet" status on the grounds of "sticking up for the little guy," (or more accuratly, the frigid, inanimate, and too small to be properly classified as a planet "little guy"). Van Horn wrote that he was appalled that children in science class were being taught that truth is a matter of majority vote and that feelings should guide each voter.

Flash forward to the present and the teacher involved (or someone claiming to be her) apparently paid Van Horn's blog a visit and posted a comment to complain about her coverage.

I am constistantly (sic) shocked at the uneducated rants of the educated. I teach 1st grade, I teach complex concepts on a level that is both appropiate (sic) and understandable to my audience, so when I happened upon your blog I was surprised. I will try to educate you on our Pluto campaign. The children were give a lesson on democracy and not science. The IAU which is comprised of over 2000 scientific members who met in Europe last August. Less than a majority attended and voted to demote the ninth planet. We decided to vote as well, a vote of popular opinion. Our tiny class of 14 stated their case for Pluto and we secured a majority agreement from fellow classmates. A great lesson on democracy and appropriate avenues for debate. I hope you now understand that this campaign was about processes and not just planets. We also teach five oceans in our class, and last year the class voted to include UB313 in our planetary line-up. Teaching children that it is acceptable to question and debate is a good thing.

Needless to say, Van Horn (a scientist by trade) was none too impressed with this 2nd attempt to democratize science.

The anthropomorphism in what the paper quoted you saying (Pluto is an inanimate object, not a "little guy" to whom school children really can or really should relate.) and your immediate ratcheting up to emotionalism ("uneducated rants") upon encountering my comment indicates to me that perhaps I was even more on the mark than I suspected.

The appropriate time to teach about government -- and thank God, so to speak, we do not live in a "democracy" -- is civics class. Likewise, the time to teach science is in science class. A scientific congress is not a government and the government has no business attempting to dictate scientific consensus. You have not only confounded two disciplines (science and civics), but you have failed to teach a good lesson in either.

Science -- and I mean the process of finding evidence and logically evaluating it -- is supposed to teach us about the universe; the consistency of the concepts (e.g., "planet") we form with reality is a fact not subject to majority vote. Government is the only social institution that can legally wield force. Studying this institution should make people aware that it is a blunt instrument suited and properly used ONLY to protect citizens from having their individual rights violated.

The scientific congress that "demoted" Pluto was not, furthermore, composed of elementary school students or even their teachers, but of scientists. Just to vote on this matter (and any review of scientific history would show that scientific debate really isn't settled by a quick vote anyway) required something you should educate your students about or better yet, help them become better able to earn: qualifications.

All I can say is "amen, brother."

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/002195.html

[D'kian]

If science teachers spent mroe time teaching science, and studying it, then most people (this Pluto "demotion" made far too much noise) would know it's a simple matter of classification, nothing more.

Clasification is important in science. Biology and chemistry made tremendous strides once living beings and elements were classified in an logical way. Planetary astronomy, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of samples from which to generalize. Until a decade ago we knew no planets but for those in our Solar system. Now we know of a great many more, and they all ahve astronomers perplexed. Therefore classifying planets is important for the advancement of astronomy.

Now, planets were once classified in two groups: gas giant planets (Jovians) and rocky planets (Terrans). This works very well, until you consider the disparities between the Terran worlds. Earth and Venus are nearly identical in size and mass (and there the similarity ends), each, though, outmasses Mars and mercury out together (and Pluto as well). Mercury has no atmosphere, mars has a thin atmosphere, The Earth has a thick atmosphere, and Venus has a super-thick atmosphere (90 times the density of ours). Mercury and Venus lack satellites, Earth has a gigantic satellite, Mars has two very small satellites.

In contrast, the Jovians are all pretty much the same. Jupiter does outmass the other Jovians put together, but then Jupiter outmasses the entire solar system minus the Sun; it's a really big planet. Aside from that, they all have multiple satellites in a variety of sizes (which they outmass easily), rings of frozen gasses, similar atmpospheres and similar atmospheric dynamics.

As you see, there are Jovian worlds, plus at least two classes of Terran worlds, and Pluto.

Pluto presents an interesting problem, too:

Once upon a time, astronomers detected perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. From these, one astronomer, Laverrier (IIRC), calculated where the source of the perturbations, presumably another planet, ought to be located. A search along the area suggested by his calculations quickly found Neptune. Later on, perturbations were detected in Neptune's orbit. Naturally yet another undiscovered planet was suspected. Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto, but it is too small to account for the perturbations. To my knowledge, these remain unaccounted for.

Given the discovery of several Pluto-like bodies in the Kuppier belt, it makes sense to suppose, particularly given the eccentricity of its orbit, that Pluto and Charon may be errant denizens of our system's outter belt. Plus, the dwarf planet classification lets us move Vesta, Ceres and other asteroids into a group of their own.

How does one go from this simple collection of facts to a "lesson in democracy" is beyond me.

[Inspector]

On a side note, the title reminds me of this:

If I don't save the wee turtles, who will? (He runs to the science lab, kicks down the door and enters as we hear him running in. Seconds later, he returns with little turtles nipping on him as Willie collapses to the ground.) YAH! Save me from the wee turtles! They were too quick for me! AAAAAGH!