24 August, 2006

It's This Kind Of Thing That Makes Me Question Global Warming, Evolution And All That Other Science Stuff

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."

3 Comments:

At 11:52 AM, August 24, 2006, Blogger dolphin said...

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.

 
At 5:03 PM, August 24, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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?

 
At 9:39 AM, August 25, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I never thought Pluto was a planet. I think he is a dog or something

 

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