<div>Am passing this along - just in case you haven't had *enough* on Pluto yet ...</div>
<div>Sharon<br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br><span class="gmail_quote">From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Solar System Ambassador</b> <<a href="mailto:ambassad@mail.jpl.nasa.gov">ambassad@mail.jpl.nasa.gov
</a>><br>Date: Aug 29, 2006 12:49 PM<br>Subject: SSA Pluto Status Change<br>To: <br><br></span>Following is a very interesting article on the children's<br>letter-writing campaign for Pluto that I wanted to share with all of you...
<br><br>--------------------<br>Use Pluto's dwarf status to think big<br>--------------------<br><br>Here's a chance to learn from science that keeping our mind open is the<br>best way to know the universe<br><br>BY JEFFRY MALLOW AND STEVEN LUBET
<br>Jeffry Mallow, left, is a professor of physics at Loyola University<br>Chicago.<br>Steven Lubet, right, is a professor of law at Northwestern University.<br><br>August 28, 2006<br><br>Now that the International Astronomical Union has demoted Pluto from
<br>full-fledged planet to dwarf, we may expect more heartfelt protests from<br>schoolchildren, whose earlier letter-writing campaigns did much to bring<br>the controversy to public attention in the first place.<br><br>It seems that kids love Pluto (both the planet and the Disney dog), and
<br>that schoolteachers have capitalized on that affection, using it to spur<br>lessons in civics and composition. After all, if scientists can vote on<br>nature, why shouldn't ordinary people lobby for the decision they want
<br>(or to reverse a decision if they don't like it)?<br><br>But science is not democratic, and children are taught exactly the wrong<br>lesson when they are encouraged to defend Pluto's planetary status.<br><br>By its nature, science continually submits long-held ideas to critical
<br>investigation and eventual revision, usually by consensus and sometimes<br>by formal vote. But the process is nothing like political voting.<br>Confronted with a mass of data, scientists try to make sense of it by<br>
establishing theoretical categories.<br><br>Almost inevitably, nature eventually strikes back by revealing new data<br>that call these categories into question. In biology, for example,<br>species definitions based on morphology (crudely, appearance) and
<br>behavior held sway until new measurement tools forced a redefinition of<br>categories. In obvious cases, the similar appearance of chimps and<br>humans, as compared to, say, snails, was confirmed by DNA analysis.<br><br>
On the other hand, the simple categorization of mushrooms as plants<br>(they don't move) and bacteria as animals (they do) proved to be quite<br>wrong. In physics, the theoretical division of matter into particles and<br>
waves worked fine - until new experiments showed that the lines were<br>blurred. Thus quantum physics was born.<br><br>It is at that point, when nature says 'No,' that scientists argue and<br>advocate - and sometimes vote - to revise and refine their theoretical
<br>categories to account for nature's new revelations.<br><br>And that's what has happened with poor Pluto. The category "planet,"<br>which worked fine for the first eight, never quite fit Pluto: Its orbit<br>was not in the same approximate plane of the others; its size kept
<br>shrinking, based on better and better measurements, until it was<br>recognized as smaller than some asteroids and a host of other objects in<br>the distant Kuiper belt; and - the final nail - its orbit crossed over<br>
that of another planet's, Neptune. So the scientific vote on Pluto was<br>simply necessary to correct old errors on the basis of new facts.<br><br>And that brings us back to the children's crusade. Although they are no<br>
doubt motivated by the best intentions, teachers do their students a<br>disservice when they rally them behind Pluto's cause. In fact, they are<br>undermining serious educational goals by suggesting that popular<br>sentiment can, or should, sway science. That is the sort of thinking
<br>that leads left-wing deconstructionists to claim that science is merely<br>a "white male Eurocentric social construction," in effect a conspiracy<br>to "privilege"<br>science above other "ways of knowing." It also leads the intelligent
<br>design advocates on the radical right to believe that the biology<br>curriculum should be determined by school board elections, rather than<br>by, well, biology.<br><br>Rather than complain about Pluto's demotion, teachers should take this
<br>opportunity to educate their children about the scientific method, and<br>how it forces scientists to keep an open mind. In a world of<br>increasingly polarized opinions and dogmatic "truths," it is truly<br>
wonderful to see scientists engage in a process of open re-evaluation.<br>Now, if we could only get politicians to do the same thing.<br><br>Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Inc.<br><br>--------------------<br><br>This article originally appeared at:
<br><a href="http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opmal284867617aug28,0,4502385.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines">http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opmal284867617aug28,0,4502385.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
</a><br><br>Visit Newsday online at <a href="http://www.newsday.com">http://www.newsday.com</a><br><br><br> </div>