PhilosophyMonkeyFranzKafka

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Friday, 29 June 2012

Is Pluto a Planet?

Posted on 06:25 by Unknown
A few days ago we saw that Joe the Plumber (representing the view of thousands or millions of Americans) prefers the Bible to science books because science books go through constant revisions while the Bible contains eternal, unchanging truth.

Of course, Joe the Plumber and company probably don't realize that, over the last few thousands of years, the Bible has gone through countless revisions, additions, omissions, translations, translations of translations, etc. And many of these, of course, are based on either innocent human error at best or ideological manipulation at worst.

When genuine science books come up with revisions, on the other hand, the reason is that new evidence has been shown to challenge some of our former ideas, and there is no sense in holding on to ideas that have been empirically shown to be deficient or at least inconsistent with other things we have evidence to believe are true.

Today we have a simple example of this idea: why Pluto got "demoted" from the status of planet to the master of the Kuiper Belt:


And if you want a more detailed explanation of our changing views of Pluto (and the reasons why), NASA has a nice video. And if Neil deGrasse Tyson is more your style, you can check him out talking about the whole Pluto debacle, including all the hate mail he's been getting from second graders, or you can check out his NOVA documentary The Pluto Files.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in animation, science, space | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • The Punishable Perils of Plagiarism
    As we've seen before (in a case in which a professor discovered a massive collective case of cheating ), academic dishonesty is a seriou...
  • Diane Kelly - What We Didn't Know about Penis Anatomy
    Penises... they're great. In my case, we're best friends. I never leave home without mine. Do you? It may seem pretty obvious what t...
  • Obama and Romney Laugh It Up
    With the upcoming elections, things have been heated up for the past few months. And though not to the same level, both major contenders, as...
  • Sean Carroll - The Case for Naturalism
    If you follow current events in the world of public intellectualism, you probably know that over the past few decades, and increasingly over...
  • Tsumanis 101
    Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Japan has been recently devastated by the accumulation of horrendous circumstances due to the earthquake ...
  • Doodling in Math - Spirals, Fibonacci and Plants - 3
    Ok, so now that you've learned how the beauty and elegance of the golden ratio and Fibonacci sequence are instantiated all over the natu...
  • Stephen Colbert - America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't
    Sorry for the sparse presence recently folks, but I've been buried under a mountain of work with the end of the semester. Last night, fo...
  • Daniel Dennett - How to Tell If You're an Atheist
    The human mind is both beautiful and frustrating. We have minds that can contemplate the meaning of infinity and consciousness, on the one h...
  • Super Monkey Collider Loses Funding
    Though the longitudinal study on whether multiple stab wounds may be harmful to monkeys is not yet complete, The Onion reports that the ec...
  • Miss USA Contestants on Evolution
    Let's be honest: beauty pageants are about how hot the contestants are. I won't pass judgment on whether this is morally acceptable ...

Categories

  • 3-minute philosophy (11)
  • 60 Second Adventures in Thought (8)
  • Alan Turing (3)
  • All Too Human (1)
  • amazing (6)
  • animals (25)
  • animation (77)
  • anthropology (4)
  • architecture (2)
  • Aristotle (13)
  • art (14)
  • atheism (41)
  • audio (21)
  • autism (2)
  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1)
  • Big Brother (4)
  • biography (9)
  • Bishop Berkeley (3)
  • Brainspotting (3)
  • Brian Cox (6)
  • Bryan Magee (1)
  • Carl Sagan (5)
  • Charles Darwin (9)
  • chemistry (6)
  • Christopher Hitchens (6)
  • cognitive science (5)
  • corruption (108)
  • Cosmos (3)
  • creationism (12)
  • Dan Ariely (1)
  • Daniel Dennett (4)
  • David Attenborough (3)
  • David Chalmers (1)
  • David Hume (17)
  • David Sloan Wilson (2)
  • debate (12)
  • Descartes (11)
  • dinosaurs (1)
  • documentary (45)
  • doodling in math (6)
  • E.O. Wilson (2)
  • economics (23)
  • education (43)
  • Einstein (11)
  • Elegant Universe (11)
  • Enemies of Reason (21)
  • environment (19)
  • Epicurus / Lucretius (1)
  • ethics (100)
  • evolution (55)
  • existentialism (13)
  • feminism (13)
  • Flying Spaghetti Monster (2)
  • Founding Fathers (13)
  • free speech (4)
  • free will (7)
  • Freud (1)
  • funny songs (12)
  • Galileo (6)
  • gay stuff (12)
  • geography (9)
  • George Carlin (2)
  • health (35)
  • Hegel (1)
  • Heidegger (1)
  • hilarious (163)
  • history (64)
  • Hobbes (8)
  • Inside Nature's Giants (6)
  • Jane Goodall (1)
  • Jim Al-Khalili (4)
  • John Locke (9)
  • John Searle (4)
  • Jon Stewart (48)
  • jurisprudence (8)
  • Kant (7)
  • Ken Miller (1)
  • Kierkegaard (2)
  • Kurt Vonnegut (1)
  • Large Hadron Collider (7)
  • Leibniz (5)
  • Leonardo da Vinci (1)
  • linguistics (11)
  • literature (25)
  • logic (60)
  • Lord Robert Winston (1)
  • magic (3)
  • Malcolm Gladwell (1)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. (2)
  • Marx (2)
  • Masters of Philosophy (19)
  • math (38)
  • Michael Faraday (2)
  • Michael Sandel (2)
  • Michael Shermer (1)
  • mind (34)
  • Mind control (1)
  • monkeys (8)
  • Monty Python (3)
  • movie (2)
  • music (7)
  • National Geographic (3)
  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson (7)
  • Newton (7)
  • Nietzsche (7)
  • Optical illusion (10)
  • Paradox (8)
  • Penn and Teller (1)
  • personal (5)
  • Peter Millican (10)
  • Peter Singer (7)
  • philosophy (111)
  • Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness (1)
  • physics (39)
  • Plato (7)
  • porn (7)
  • privacy (4)
  • problem of evil (4)
  • psychology (18)
  • public announcement (2)
  • racism (19)
  • religion (115)
  • Richard Dawkins (12)
  • Richard Feynman (7)
  • Ricky Gervais (1)
  • Robert Krulwich (1)
  • RSA Animate (16)
  • Sam Harris (3)
  • sartre (1)
  • science (79)
  • sex (19)
  • SNL (2)
  • Socrates (7)
  • space (32)
  • sports (4)
  • Stephen Colbert (40)
  • Stephen Fry (6)
  • Stephen Hawking (4)
  • Stephen J. Gould (1)
  • Steven Pinker (6)
  • Steven Weinberg (1)
  • technology (20)
  • TEDTalks (50)
  • The Human Sexes (4)
  • The Onion (24)
  • Tim Minchin (4)
  • time (5)
  • time lapse (10)
  • William Lane Craig (3)
  • Wittgenstein (3)

Blog Archive

  • ►  2013 (49)
    • ►  August (1)
    • ►  July (9)
    • ►  June (9)
    • ►  May (8)
    • ►  April (8)
    • ►  March (6)
    • ►  February (3)
    • ►  January (5)
  • ▼  2012 (205)
    • ►  December (4)
    • ►  November (7)
    • ►  October (12)
    • ►  September (14)
    • ►  August (15)
    • ►  July (20)
    • ▼  June (19)
      • The Most Interesting Man in the World
      • Is Pluto a Planet?
      • E.O. Wilson - Advice to Young Scientists
      • Getting to Mars - Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror
      • Joe the Plumber on Why He Prefers the Bible to Sci...
      • Breaking the Code - The Biography of Alan Turing
      • Diane Kelly - What We Didn't Know about Penis Anatomy
      • Slinky Magic in Slow Motion
      • This Is the Best Sermon You'll Hear Today. Amen!
      • What's Up with Pythagoras?
      • When did this blog become (semi) popular?
      • When Aliens Read the Socratic Dialogues
      • Three Minute Philosophy - Aristotle
      • Frans de Waal - Moral Behavior in Animals
      • Measuring the Universe
      • The Prisoner's Dilemma
      • The Transit of Venus
      • Colbert and Stewart Disagree on Sugary Drinks Ban
      • Sex: An Unnatural History - The Church
    • ►  May (27)
    • ►  April (26)
    • ►  March (19)
    • ►  February (22)
    • ►  January (20)
  • ►  2011 (217)
    • ►  December (19)
    • ►  November (20)
    • ►  October (17)
    • ►  September (19)
    • ►  August (16)
    • ►  July (19)
    • ►  June (15)
    • ►  May (19)
    • ►  April (16)
    • ►  March (22)
    • ►  February (19)
    • ►  January (16)
  • ►  2010 (29)
    • ►  December (26)
    • ►  November (3)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile