[YAPA] Fwd: SSA Pluto Status Change

[Sharon Shanks]

Am passing this along - just in case you haven't had *enough* on Pluto yet
...
Sharon

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Solar System Ambassador <ambassad at mail.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Aug 29, 2006 12:49 PM
Subject: SSA Pluto Status Change
To:

Following is a very interesting article on the children's
letter-writing campaign for Pluto that I wanted to share with all of you...

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Use Pluto's dwarf status to think big
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Here's a chance to learn from science that keeping our mind open is the
best way to know the universe

BY JEFFRY MALLOW AND STEVEN LUBET
Jeffry Mallow, left, is a professor of physics at Loyola University
Chicago.
Steven Lubet, right, is a professor of law at Northwestern University.

August 28, 2006

Now that the International Astronomical Union has demoted Pluto from
full-fledged planet to dwarf, we may expect more heartfelt protests from
schoolchildren, whose earlier letter-writing campaigns did much to bring
the controversy to public attention in the first place.

It seems that kids love Pluto (both the planet and the Disney dog), and
that schoolteachers have capitalized on that affection, using it to spur
lessons in civics and composition. After all, if scientists can vote on
nature, why shouldn't ordinary people lobby for the decision they want
(or to reverse a decision if they don't like it)?

But science is not democratic, and children are taught exactly the wrong
lesson when they are encouraged to defend Pluto's planetary status.

By its nature, science continually submits long-held ideas to critical
investigation and eventual revision, usually by consensus and sometimes
by formal vote. But the process is nothing like political voting.
Confronted with a mass of data, scientists try to make sense of it by
establishing theoretical categories.

Almost inevitably, nature eventually strikes back by revealing new data
that call these categories into question. In biology, for example,
species definitions based on morphology (crudely, appearance) and
behavior held sway until new measurement tools forced a redefinition of
categories. In obvious cases, the similar appearance of chimps and
humans, as compared to, say, snails, was confirmed by DNA analysis.

On the other hand, the simple categorization of mushrooms as plants
(they don't move) and bacteria as animals (they do) proved to be quite
wrong. In physics, the theoretical division of matter into particles and
waves worked fine - until new experiments showed that the lines were
blurred. Thus quantum physics was born.

It is at that point, when nature says 'No,' that scientists argue and
advocate - and sometimes vote - to revise and refine their theoretical
categories to account for nature's new revelations.

And that's what has happened with poor Pluto. The category "planet,"
which worked fine for the first eight, never quite fit Pluto: Its orbit
was not in the same approximate plane of the others; its size kept
shrinking, based on better and better measurements, until it was
recognized as smaller than some asteroids and a host of other objects in
the distant Kuiper belt; and - the final nail - its orbit crossed over
that of another planet's, Neptune. So the scientific vote on Pluto was
simply necessary to correct old errors on the basis of new facts.

And that brings us back to the children's crusade. Although they are no
doubt motivated by the best intentions, teachers do their students a
disservice when they rally them behind Pluto's cause. In fact, they are
undermining serious educational goals by suggesting that popular
sentiment can, or should, sway science. That is the sort of thinking
that leads left-wing deconstructionists to claim that science is merely
a "white male Eurocentric social construction," in effect a conspiracy
to "privilege"
science above other "ways of knowing." It also leads the intelligent
design advocates on the radical right to believe that the biology
curriculum should be determined by school board elections, rather than
by, well, biology.

Rather than complain about Pluto's demotion, teachers should take this
opportunity to educate their children about the scientific method, and
how it forces scientists to keep an open mind. In a world of
increasingly polarized opinions and dogmatic "truths," it is truly
wonderful to see scientists engage in a process of open re-evaluation.
Now, if we could only get politicians to do the same thing.

Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Inc.

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opmal284867617aug28,0,4502385.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines

Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
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