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.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Legitimizing Four Years of Study
I wrote this shortly after commencement:
There is a debate in anthropology about if the discipline should be a science, or part of the humanities. At first, I wanted it to be a science because I wanted the legitimacy and authority afforded science in today's Western hegemony. But I also didn't want it to be a science because then it would be narrow minded and restrictive, perhaps isolated, ignoring the ideological and ethical concerns that must be debated to ensure it's applications are "good" and "right" (think atom bomb for a "bad" and "wrong" case study in applied science).
So then I decided that it should be in the humanities because my professor said it was, and I liked her, and it seemed easier for me, for the way my mind works, just shy of an excuse for why I struggled to explain anthropology and its concepts. Everyone had accepted a certain ambiguity in the humanities; it was ok to be engaged in lengthy discourses that went round and round-- the process was respected, not just the end result.
Anthropology has many names and definitions, and it's literal translation: the study of man, necessitates further discussion. The shortest of these (although I cannot recall to whom to attribute it) is "the study of common sense;" it is also the one that got the most giggles in my anthropology theory course.
Ultimately, the debate stems from one of anthropology's favorite activities: problemitization. In a sort of post-modern thought, anything that exists can be problemitized, even existence, except that is generally left to the philosophers, from whom anthropology has been drawing of late. (Anthropology has a habit of sampling other fields, but it does go both ways; the ethnography is ours.) Other anthropology thinkers have decided perception and conception of existence is culturally specific. Either way it is assumed.
One cannot help but assume some things, and must put parameters on discourses and debates, to keep them from getting out of hand, like what Geertz's thick description skirted. I have no doubt that this monologue will become contextually reasonable, if it is not already, as I cannot remove myself from my own cultural lens and historical setting.
For now, I will leave it at this: anthropology is both and neither. It's still developing. It can never be a science in the same sense as physical sciences because it deals with living people in situations that cannot be identically reproduced, making experimentation impossible. I feel inadequate to elaborate beyond this, having only a BA in the subject, and that only barely earned.
What if I were I to do it again? I don't really know. Possibly major in rhetoric, double minor in anthropology and creative writing. I love words, but not the way a linguist does, more like an artist with an emphasis on what words can do when put in the right order.
There is a debate in anthropology about if the discipline should be a science, or part of the humanities. At first, I wanted it to be a science because I wanted the legitimacy and authority afforded science in today's Western hegemony. But I also didn't want it to be a science because then it would be narrow minded and restrictive, perhaps isolated, ignoring the ideological and ethical concerns that must be debated to ensure it's applications are "good" and "right" (think atom bomb for a "bad" and "wrong" case study in applied science).
So then I decided that it should be in the humanities because my professor said it was, and I liked her, and it seemed easier for me, for the way my mind works, just shy of an excuse for why I struggled to explain anthropology and its concepts. Everyone had accepted a certain ambiguity in the humanities; it was ok to be engaged in lengthy discourses that went round and round-- the process was respected, not just the end result.
Anthropology has many names and definitions, and it's literal translation: the study of man, necessitates further discussion. The shortest of these (although I cannot recall to whom to attribute it) is "the study of common sense;" it is also the one that got the most giggles in my anthropology theory course.
Ultimately, the debate stems from one of anthropology's favorite activities: problemitization. In a sort of post-modern thought, anything that exists can be problemitized, even existence, except that is generally left to the philosophers, from whom anthropology has been drawing of late. (Anthropology has a habit of sampling other fields, but it does go both ways; the ethnography is ours.) Other anthropology thinkers have decided perception and conception of existence is culturally specific. Either way it is assumed.
One cannot help but assume some things, and must put parameters on discourses and debates, to keep them from getting out of hand, like what Geertz's thick description skirted. I have no doubt that this monologue will become contextually reasonable, if it is not already, as I cannot remove myself from my own cultural lens and historical setting.
For now, I will leave it at this: anthropology is both and neither. It's still developing. It can never be a science in the same sense as physical sciences because it deals with living people in situations that cannot be identically reproduced, making experimentation impossible. I feel inadequate to elaborate beyond this, having only a BA in the subject, and that only barely earned.
What if I were I to do it again? I don't really know. Possibly major in rhetoric, double minor in anthropology and creative writing. I love words, but not the way a linguist does, more like an artist with an emphasis on what words can do when put in the right order.
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