I learned things in elementary school. The alphabet. My times tables. The Solar System. I accepted it all without question.
Now they tell us that Pluto is not a planet.
Okay, fine. We’ve kicked poor little glasses-wearing, highwater-pants Pluto out of the Solar System club.
Science is full of accepted thoughts, like little Pluto’s planethood, that get revisited and rethought after more information is uncovered. Just ask anyone about the four humours.
Now, I’m not denying science at all. I firmly believe in it’s usefulness as one of the children of Philosophy. But let’s be honest. When certain people insist that Science is Truth and cannot be questioned, that it’s rules and findings are concrete and that acceptance of those findings equals enlightenment I’m inclined to now say “Tell that to Pluto.”
Anyone who truly thinks that science can’t be questioned doesn’t know what they’re talking about. What is science after all if it’s not asking questions.
Where some people get confused (ie, the “intelligent design” crowd) is that they think it’s science to just arbitrarily question without reason or evidence.
Presumably when you studied the planets in elementary school they told you that Pluto was different from the other planets in a lot of ways (and mentioned what those ways were). I know they told me that. All that has happened since then is that the definition of a planet has been changed. Nothing has been changed about Pluto (or about what we know about Pluto) except for the category of object-orbiting-the-sun to which astronomers assign it. Have you started questioning how the solar system works?
If not, then why on earth should this make you question evolution, which is based on an incredibly well-documented fossil record and on a huge pool of information about plant and animal genetics?
I never thought Pluto was a planet. I think he is a dog or something
Pluto is a planet. The IAU decision was made by four percent of its members, most of whom are not planetary scientists. It was a done in a highly controversial process and immediately opposed by almost 300 professional astronomers in a petition led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern accurately described the IAU decision as “sloppy science that would never pass peer review.” He favors adding a new subcategory of planets, the ice dwarfs, which would include Pluto and Eris; these would still be planets, just of a different type than the terrestrial and gas giant planets. There is no reason the world should be bound to accept a bad decision by a small number of scientists intent on imposing their particular agenda on everyone else. The debate over Pluto is far from over, and it is very likely the demotion will not stand.