5 ms·

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but... That's pretty much how all science works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept https://en.

I hate to be the one to break the bad news to you, but... That's pretty much how all science works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept Categorization is a leaky abstraction. Use them when they're useful, and ignore them when they become more trouble than they're worth.

odyssey7 5y ago
At risk of maybe going too far on a tangent, I understand this idea and the species example is a good one. The planets are different because they were first defined as mystical and cultural concepts, before they could be understood as scientific ones. There are plenty of people who still think about the planets as cultural concepts rather than scientific ones. (What is a Jupiter? It’s a thing in space that our culture has named “Jupiter.”) I think we should define the planets the way co-star does. By listing them: DATA PLANET = MERCURY | MARS | ETC Scientists can have their own definitions of things, but they will face resistance if they try to dictate culture through their definitions. https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell/ https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell/
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure animal and plant species also existed as cultural and mystical concepts, long before science was a thing. All of your analysis can be applied equally well to species, as well as planets... Or the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) or the five Oceans, or the seven Continents. They're all simply human attempts to impose neat category boundaries across a continuum of natural phenomena that are definitely not neat. Categories can be useful, but they often lead to pointless arguments by lay people (a la Pluto's relegation) when we start to fetishize a human-created category structure as an essential expression of underlying reality. It's just plain old human narcissism.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I think this boils down to journalists trying to bait outrage by implying that scientific definitions should dictate cultural ones (tomato may be a fruit biologically speaking but if you put it in a fruit salad nobody will like you). Pluto is a "planet" in the same way the sun is "not a star". If you tell someone to draw some stars you'll be confused if they just draw a few massive orbs of fire rather than some bright dots. Before publishers discovered outrage bait as a way to sell ads, "actually Pluto is a dwarf planet not a planet" would have been an irrelevant nerdy factoid but now it's presented as a cultural issue everyone needs to have an opinion on. So I propose just giving scientists migraines instead and discussing whether the sun and moon should be considered planets or stars.
  - odyssey7 5y ago
    You have good points here for scientific understanding vs cultural in general. I wasn’t specific enough. The planets formed as cultural concepts in the sense that they were absolutely divorced from tangible experience other than in their role as mere “wandering stars,” allowing them to exist as pure symbolic archetypes. The idea of Mars bringing war has little to do with the fact that it and related objects have cleared their neighborhoods. There’s a distinction here between the planets, which are the symbols that can be enumerated, and a planet, which is what the categorization problem for scientists involves.
twobitshifter 5y ago
My favorite example of this is that trees aren’t really a phylogenetic group all their own. They’re just plants and plants can become tall and woody with a few genetic tweaks. You can’t trace trees to a common ancestor because the ancestors of many types of trees are just ordinary plants. https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree/ https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...
- ademup 5y ago
  Same goes for fish, which I just read in the excellent book "Why Fish Don't Exist" by Lulu Miller. An example being that a lungfish has more attributes similar to a cow than to a salmon.
  - canadianfella 5y ago
    > An example being that a lungfish has more attributes similar to a cow than to a salmon. Such as?
hnbad 5y ago
This is an example I also find helpful when dealing with people who insist that "there are only two genders" ("because science"). Even species is a leaky abstraction, let alone sex, gender and sexual attraction. You can argue for a strict gender binary normatively (and we can disagree on that), but even if you try to conflate gender and sex it's still scientifically illiterate to insist that there is a strict binary (although for sex at least humans are bimodal). Leaky abstractions can still be useful but you have to be aware that they're just abstractions and still understand that reality is messy and complicated or you'll end up legislating the value pi.
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  You make the point beautifully, and I really appreciate how you bring home the consequences of flawed thinking in our politics.

odyssey7 5y ago

At risk of maybe going too far on a tangent, I understand this idea and the species example is a good one. The planets are different because they were first defined as mystical and cultural concepts, before they could be understood as scientific ones. There are plenty of people who still think about the planets as cultural concepts rather than scientific ones. (What is a Jupiter? It’s a thing in space that our culture has named “Jupiter.”) I think we should define the planets the way co-star does. By listing them: DATA PLANET = MERCURY | MARS | ETC Scientists can have their own definitions of things, but they will face resistance if they try to dictate culture through their definitions. https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell/ https://www.costarastrology.com/why-haskell/

SkittyDog 5y ago
I'm pretty sure animal and plant species also existed as cultural and mystical concepts, long before science was a thing. All of your analysis can be applied equally well to species, as well as planets... Or the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) or the five Oceans, or the seven Continents. They're all simply human attempts to impose neat category boundaries across a continuum of natural phenomena that are definitely not neat. Categories can be useful, but they often lead to pointless arguments by lay people (a la Pluto's relegation) when we start to fetishize a human-created category structure as an essential expression of underlying reality. It's just plain old human narcissism.
- hnbad 5y ago
  I think this boils down to journalists trying to bait outrage by implying that scientific definitions should dictate cultural ones (tomato may be a fruit biologically speaking but if you put it in a fruit salad nobody will like you). Pluto is a "planet" in the same way the sun is "not a star". If you tell someone to draw some stars you'll be confused if they just draw a few massive orbs of fire rather than some bright dots. Before publishers discovered outrage bait as a way to sell ads, "actually Pluto is a dwarf planet not a planet" would have been an irrelevant nerdy factoid but now it's presented as a cultural issue everyone needs to have an opinion on. So I propose just giving scientists migraines instead and discussing whether the sun and moon should be considered planets or stars.
- odyssey7 5y ago
  You have good points here for scientific understanding vs cultural in general. I wasn’t specific enough. The planets formed as cultural concepts in the sense that they were absolutely divorced from tangible experience other than in their role as mere “wandering stars,” allowing them to exist as pure symbolic archetypes. The idea of Mars bringing war has little to do with the fact that it and related objects have cleared their neighborhoods. There’s a distinction here between the planets, which are the symbols that can be enumerated, and a planet, which is what the categorization problem for scientists involves.

twobitshifter 5y ago

My favorite example of this is that trees aren’t really a phylogenetic group all their own. They’re just plants and plants can become tall and woody with a few genetic tweaks. You can’t trace trees to a common ancestor because the ancestors of many types of trees are just ordinary plants. https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree/ https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...

ademup 5y ago
Same goes for fish, which I just read in the excellent book "Why Fish Don't Exist" by Lulu Miller. An example being that a lungfish has more attributes similar to a cow than to a salmon.
- canadianfella 5y ago
  > An example being that a lungfish has more attributes similar to a cow than to a salmon. Such as?

hnbad 5y ago

This is an example I also find helpful when dealing with people who insist that "there are only two genders" ("because science"). Even species is a leaky abstraction, let alone sex, gender and sexual attraction. You can argue for a strict gender binary normatively (and we can disagree on that), but even if you try to conflate gender and sex it's still scientifically illiterate to insist that there is a strict binary (although for sex at least humans are bimodal). Leaky abstractions can still be useful but you have to be aware that they're just abstractions and still understand that reality is messy and complicated or you'll end up legislating the value pi.

SkittyDog 5y ago
You make the point beautifully, and I really appreciate how you bring home the consequences of flawed thinking in our politics.