A rose by any other name...

So I found myself reading this, and thinking somewhat anthropological thoughts about planets.

For those of you who've been living under a cosmic rock for the past two years, our beloved Pluto is no longer deemed worthy of planetary status and was forced to join the ranks of a new category: dwarf planets. (Read more here.)

And it's all because scientists don't like things that aren't neat. It can't be two things at once because it just can't, or, as in this case, it can't overlap Neptune's orbit. Humans have a natural need to organize the world around them, and so are born categories, and sub categories, and sub sub categories, and committees of experts to decide where to draw the boundaries, and committees to pick and verify the experts, and... you get my point. It is my opinion that scientists take this to the extreme, potentially ignoring things that don't fit into their preconceived notions of how things work.

Back to Pluto.

According to the articles cited above, there hadn't been a consensus on what defines a planet; it was a missing category. After much haggling between experts, they came to a consensus.

Now there are several celestial bodies that are impacted by this, and we of the general public were perfectly content, nay, eager to welcome these as planets. Instead we were dealt a traumatic blow as helpless little Pluto was plucked from solar system models in classrooms and science fairs across the world. This prompted outrage, and even a facebook group titled "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet" to spread the word.

I guess they thought that calling it a dwarf planet would keep us happy. But now they wont even allow us to have that. The media is praising this as an elevation in Pluto's status, but it isn't. Changing the label on something doesn't change what it is, just how you think about it, and as it's still less than a planet, I, personally, cannot accept it. The new word boys and girls is: plutoid.

One astronomy claims "the action makes Pluto more important... instead of being a "puny" outer planet, Pluto is now a "prototype of a new type of fascinating objects." Or is it: same object, new category? A rearrangement? I certainly think so.