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This is not to take away from the fun of investigating and identifying these ‘bifurcation islands’, but on the question of whether they qualify as ‘islands’: >
by jameshart 2y ago
This is not to take away from the fun of investigating and identifying these ‘bifurcation islands’, but on the question of whether they qualify as ‘islands’:
> Like a delta island, it is surrounded entirely by sea and rivers. As an area of land separate from a continent, permanently and entirely surrounded by water, it seems to fit every definition of an island I can find.
I agree that by ‘Air Bud’ rules these qualify as islands (‘ain’t no rule says an island can’t have one end halfway up a mountain and the other at sea level’) but I think there is a reason why we don’t instinctively feel like they qualify as ‘proper islands’.
Specifically, I think the instinctive definition of an island is that it emerges from the water surrounding it at a consistent elevation. It has a shoreline that is broadly level.
The delta islands that he identifies as being basically the same as bifurcation islands are typically surrounded by tidal water on all sides so their shoreline is all at sea level.
Counterpoint, though: Goat Island, which is in the middle of Niagara Falls, and has one end at the elevation of Lake Erie and the other at the lower elevation of Lake Ontario. Does this feel like a ‘proper island’? I know in my mind I sort of struggle to think of Goat Island as being an island, not two islands that happen to be right next to one another… but I can adjust my mental definition of island to account for it; but extending it to the continent-spanning bifurcation islands still feels too much of a stretch.
This is like the ‘dwarf planet’ problem - there wasn’t a good way to make Pluto a planet without making a lot of things that definitely aren’t planets also count as planets.
Is there a good way to make Goat Island an island, without also making the bifurcation islands into islands?
Also… Australia is clearly an island by this definition. But then so is Antarctica.. and the entire Americas. And the Eurasian/African supercontinent…
- rusk 2y agoPresumably (with little more than an 8 y/o grasp of astronomy), Pluto’s orbit being consistent with the other heliocentric planets gave it an extra qualifier?
- Retric 2y agoIt’s not consistent with the other planets though. Mercury is off by 7 degrees, the other planets are within 3. Pluto meanwhile is 17 degrees off the ecliptic so it’s a serious outer.
- BurningFrog 2y agoI resolve these things is by remembering that words are only approximate definitions of real world concepts. This means there will always be a fuzzy area where it's not clear if the word covers it or not. I recommend not trying to determine exactly what the boundaries of the word are. Try using more/other words instead. This may be an easier thing to internalize when you know more than one language.
- jameshart 2y agoI’m extremely comfortable with fuzzy boundaries but the article in question literally invites the subject of ‘why are these things islands and these other things not?’
- BurningFrog 2y agoOK, That's a relevant context that I missed.
- robocat 2y agoMany boundaries are in rivers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- madcaptenor 2y agoWikipedia's list of islands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area) starts with a separate table for "continental landmasses", containing Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, Antarctica, and Australia. Australia is ~3.5 times the size of Greenland (the #5 landmass) so between Australia and Greenland seems a nice place to draw the lint. But Greenland is in turn ~2.5 times the size of #6 New Guinea. Maybe if Greenland were more populated (let's imagine, say, that the Earth's axis is positioned differently so that it's warmer there) it would be considered a continent?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- poizan42 2y agoMaybe a more natural way to make the distinction is by looking at the average width of the body of water seperating the landmass relative to the area of the landmass. That is an island is a landmass that has an area (A) of at least A_min and at most A_max and is either a) Surrounded by a body of water with average width W_avg where W_avg > f_min*sqrt(A) - or b) Surrounded by a body of water with average width W_avg where W_avg > W_min Fill in the constants A_min, A_max, f_min and W_min to get as close as possible to real world usage of the word "island".
- jameshart 2y agoI like the effort - does feel like part of what makes something an island is the width of the water surrounding it relative to its size… but I dunno man, the Pacific ocean’s pretty wide… it’s going to make the ‘average width’ of the water around Committee’s Punch Bowl Bifurcation Island pretty big.
- eesmith 2y agoI'm quite taken by your Goat Island example - thanks for mentioning it!