I think it's good sometimes to unfocus your brain a bit from categorical thinking like "These things are alive, and here are the characteristics of living thing

I think it's good sometimes to unfocus your brain a bit from categorical thinking like "These things are alive, and here are the characteristics of living things" - or - Here are the 3/4/5/??? phases of matter, and here are their characteristics - or - Light is a wave and a particle TO Here are the observations and they are consistent with living things/solid matter/etc. The categories are cultural; they are in your mind, not in the world. This is not the most important thing to teach at the start of a subject, but anyone who really pushes the frontiers of understanding has to deal with it. Is Pluto a planet? - is not a purely scientific question, it's deeply cultural as well. Does String Theory really explain anything in the real world? - is a somewhat settled question at this point, but it was a live problem for quite a while, and it was a live problem in scientific culture as much as anything (mainly because experimentation proved to be ... difficult) Is light a wave or a particle? Does it change it's behavior? - Probably better to say, "We have made observations consistent with both particle and wave characteristics, trying to enforce a satisfying explanation does not help scientific understanding".