Re: Justice For Pluto

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 20:17:38 +0000 (UTC), stephen@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Lester Zick <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 15:41:59 +0000 (UTC), stephen@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

*** T. Winter <***.Winter@xxxxxx> wrote:
In article <rrnof2d9btsnvs8k7pm9p7qf01tjg0apjn@xxxxxxx> Lester Zick <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
...
> No but I rather expect the astronomers who sought to explain
> gravitational perturbations in the orbits of what they considered
> planets did. I'll go with them. For that matter why call trans jovian
> planets planets? They're obviously just gas balls more akin to proto
> stellar masses than the actual planets.

And so is Jupiter.

> Sauce for the goose. If we had
> to draft the definition for planets today our definition might look a
> good deal different than those drafted thousands of years ago.

They were already a good deal different. Thousands of years ago we had
the following seven planets: Sun, Moon, Mercurius, Venus, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturnus. The Sun lost planet status about 450 years ago (when the
Earth became a planet), and the Moon lost planet status some 50 years
later.

"Planet" is a word whose meaning has truly wandered from its
etymology, pun intended. "Asteroid", which literally means "star like"
is another one. The word was coined to describe Ceres. Ceres
appeared as a point and did not show a disk like the other planets,
but appeared pointlike as stars do. This definition of "star like"
excludes the Sun, which actually is a star, and Jupiter which
is the most like a star of the planets. Ceres and the other
asteroids are some of the least "star like" objects in the
solar system. Natural language is an amusing thing.

And modern mathspeak is not.

Of course not. It is far too precise, logical and consistent to be
as amusing as natural language.

But not too precise, logical, and consistent to be amusing as a
technical language. It's all smoke and mirrors and assumptions of
truth in a travesty of logic amounting to a trivium of truth.

Mathematical definitions do not
wander about the way definitions in natural language do.

They just wander around in circles instead.

"Planet" originally referred to an visible object that moved against
the "fixed" stars, excluding comets. Later it became an object that
showed a disc that orbited the Sun in a regular orbit. Somewhere
along the way it started to refer to non-stars orbiting any star,
not just our Sun. And so on. The new "official" definition
is not at all related to the original definition.

Nor is it apparently related to how the planet Pluto was discovered.

Mathematical definitions are nowhere near so entertaining.
"Rational number" has meant "a number expressible as the ratio of two
integers" since the phrase was coined, just as "transcendental number"
has meant "a number that is not the root of any integer polynomial"
ever since the day somebody first used the phrase "transcendental number".

Well if you can plutoize a planet I reckon others can plutoize
irrational and transcendental numbers and thus return the favor.

Your lack of knowledge is showing.

As always.

Another Plutocrat.

Another witless remark.

No, no, indeed, Stephen, another half witted remark perhaps but then
I'd rather have half a wit than none.

~v~~
.

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