Pluto and the Open Mind

This post harkens back to and is related in spirit to the Sunday post about the tyranny of moral certainty. Today it was announced that astronomers voted to declare the Sun has 8 planets, an untold number of dwarf planets and an other category, which includes asteroids and comets. Pluto, the object formerly known as a planet, is now a dwarf planet (perhaps it prefers to be called "little planet"). And that is how it should be.

How is this related to the earlier post? It makes my point that new data and evidence lead to new understandings, and that science is not about tradition, history or sentimentality. It is about reason. It has long since made sense to include Pluto with the other planets as it is more and more obvious that it more like the other small icy objects of the Kuiper belt than the 8 main planets. All this declaration (which really changes nothing important) does is recognize that fact and that is why it's significant. Pluto was made a planet because astronomy in 1930 didn't know any better. Now we do, and so astronomers have made the correction, and that should lead to a better understanding of the solar system in the future.

The sentimentality of the original planetary definition (trying to preserve Pluto's place as a planet proper) made little sense and was roundly rejected by the main body of the group. Bravo, and a good object lesson to the general public about scientific integrity.