Pluto Should Never Have Been a Planet

I just finished reading Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why it had it Coming, and it was a fantastic read.  It got me thinking of so many things; scientific progress and history, how the public perceives scientific ideas, becoming entrenched in a way of thinking, distress over change, and how so much of education seems to be storing data in memory rather than learning algorithms (and man for some reason I've really been connecting with my inner computer scientist lately) are just some of the highlights.  It's amazing how much depth there is to the trivial or technical classification details of a rock out there past Neptune.  There's one more aspect of the book that I loved, Mike Brown's humanity in his love for his wife, his daughter, and the sky, but I think I'll write about that in detail later.

I remember when Pluto was reclassified.  Many jokingly consoled forlorn Pluto, kicked out of the planet club by the big boys.  After reading the book I find it odd, why did no one talk about Eris (the Kuiper belt object actually larger than Pluto which theoretically could have been the tenth planet)?  Why did no one bring up Charon, Pluto's moon which is almost as large as Pluto?  Why did no one discuss what exactly it meant to be a planet, and how exciting it was that we were learning more about our solar system in finding so much out there in a whole new asteroid belt out beyond the gas giants, the aforementioned Kuiper belt?

I've groused before on this blog about the dreadful way mathematics is taught, perhaps it's time to get some of that ire up for science as well.  One thing the book made clear is that we all learned that the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and (as we learned at least) Pluto.  Did any of us ever learn what a planet is?  I think the 'Pluto controversy' pretty clearly indicates no, we didn't.  If we had we would have always found Pluto's planethood a little odd.

Pluto's moon doesn't orbit around it, they orbit around each other.  Pluto's orbit is eccentric from the other planets.  Pluto is smaller than many planet's moons, including Earth's.  To kids and creatives that might make Pluto mysterious and fascinating (it did to Mike Brown as a child), but to scientists and logical thinkers it seems misplaced in the solar system.  And indeed it was.

But no one really seemed to feel that way.  We all sort of felt bad for Pluto, and some people might have even been upset.  I think there's two major components why.  The first is, as I alluded to, the way we learn science.  The next is our unwillingness to accept change.

Thinking about the Pluto controversy I am brought to worry that we are often taught 'the way things are'.  Mike Brown talks about trying to get students out of the mindset of, "Give me the answers I need to know for the test".  The unfortunate implication is that something gets them into this mindset in the first place.  Standardized testing is a convenient and popular target for modern problems in education, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't mention that of necessity it requires students to memorize and later regurgitate facts, and testing any deeper thought processes is at the very least much more difficult.

I read a NYT article that talked about why teaching the difference between fact and opinion like we currently do in schools is morally perilous, as well as simply fundamentally misguided.  It points out interesting ideas, like how teaching children that facts are provable and true causes them to equate truth with provability, even though they're very different things.  I think a focus on 'facts' in science class also carries a dogmatic implication for young students.  Science is always true because we collected evidence for our ideas.  Here's where the distress comes up; Pluto no longer being a planet means facts can change as our understanding does.

And that opens up a whole new can of worms in our minds.  It forces introspection and meta-cognition, in which sadly most of us are loath to participate.  It creates a crisis of certainty, because after all if Pluto being a planet isn't true what other tidbits we learned might not be true?  Doubt is, unfortunately, scary to many.  We're unwilling to change our thinking, to update our knowledge, to print retractions or errata for our memories.  This is why teachings of humility are so important.  They allow us to maintain our sense of self and identity even when we're forced to change our thinking, context, or experience.

A great idea that came together for me when I read The Island of Knowledge is that science must necessarily be the least sure of itself of all human endeavors or reservoirs of understanding.  It must be forever willing to except new evidence or observation which proves previous ideas wrong, and moreover perhaps must forever be seeking these out.  No less than the well known and liked Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently said in a podcast I listened to that the greatest problem is always dogmatism, because it ends a conversation and makes learning from others difficult or impossible.  Let's take this to heart, accept that Pluto should never have been a planet, and rejoice in the fascinating newly unfolding mysteries of that Kuiper belt.

Crying About Mathematics

I recently saw this image posted on Facebook and then looked at the last 3 posts from Grammarly, the original poster.  We have a think piece on whether universities should require writing proficiency for graduation, a joke about precision and exactitude in grammar standards leading to vandalism (with indications that that's at least understandable) and a prettied up quote from John Dewey that, "Education is not the preparation for life; it is life itself."  That last one is particularly interesting in contrast with this image and it leads to the obvious implication that what they really mean is, "Education (in the arts, humanities, and soft sciences) is deeply fulfilling and enriches life to the point of making it worth living, but of course we know technical sciences and mathematics are just painful things to be suffered through."

This is probably a good example of why US culture is so innumerate (the numerical equivalent to illiterate, a term coined by John Allen Paulos) and inept at scientific thought.  This is where we get the reflex of credibility toward the phrases "experts say" or "studies show" or the news stories that butcher or manipulate statistics to serve whatever purpose hits the emotional agenda of the story.  I'll be the first to admit (and then probably go on a tirade about the problem for however long you listen plus ten minutes) that our mathematics education is just heinous and obsolete to a point that would be absurd if it weren't so damaging and dangerous.  With that said the solution is certainly not to perpetuate the idea that these things are hard, stressful, and just generally unpleasant.

I've written here before about the nobility and importance of mathematics, and this one won't be the last time I do, so perhaps I'm just belaboring an idea, but I'm going to list out some of mathematics' virtues anyway.

• Math is Mind Expanding: Mathematics deals with concepts that can go beyond normal human experience.  How often do you work with the infinite?  Did you know there were several different sizes of infinity, and that some infinities are larger than others?  I had a very serious discussion with some family and friends recently about dimensional figures and the nature of God.  I wear a metal Möbius band (a strip that has only one side, yes really) on a necklace that was given to me by my wife.
• Math is Humbling: The humanities are important largely because they teach us to think emotionally, form opinions, and understand the human experience.  Math, and the sciences (though perhaps to a lesser degree), teach us to think rationally, examine our ideas, and understand the world around us and, yes, the human experience as well.  In mathematics one thing must strictly follow from the last and we must learn to abide by the rules of the operations we're performing.  We can form and idea or an opinion just as easily as we can in any humanities class, but then we're told to really look at that, to see if it makes sense in context, and it can become starkly clear when it's not.  Humanities often remind us that how we perceive and judge the world around us matters.  Mathematics, and the sciences, remind us that the laws of systems (like the universe) don't just bend to our will because we think we have a better idea of how things should be.
• Math Teaches Self Awareness: Like my last point, the requirements within mathematics that we "stay within the lines" as we progress form one thought to the next in our process of proving, computing, or deriving new information means we need to learn to watch our thoughts, and see where they fail to stay consistent with our principles.  Learning how we think, how one thought in the mind springs from the last and whether that process is working properly or in need of reform is pretty clearly an invaluable skill that will better society if widespread.

So if math is so wonderful, why is it so often denigrated, like in the image above depicting it as something that is sure to spawn sadness and strife sufficient to stimulate sobbing?  Why is this far from the first post to the effect of, "Ooh math really sucks, don't you all agree?" that has gotten shared around?  Why do people flaunt their ignorance or lack of active engagement in mathematics with phrases like, "I totally forgot how any of that stuff works, but hey I'm never going to use it again, right?"  Why does that receive knowing chuckles and appreciative nods instead of the derision or contemplative sadness such ignorance or loss of talent should garner ("I can't remember a thing about the Civil War, but who cares?  I'm not becoming a historian," "I used to be able to play the oboe, but now I can hardly even remember the basic fingerings," "Why did I even do all of that reading in high school?  I never ended up being in a Shakespeare play or even going to one.")?

Well, there are systematic problems.  Like I said we teach math horribly (in the US at least), especially at the elementary level which means that when children are forming their emotional understandings they learn early that math is something hard and to be feared.  It doesn't help that so many who shape the culture are also the worst at mathematics and mathematical thinking.  Still, none of these jabs at "that painful and useless old field, math" seem to present solutions or even raise awareness about the problems of media misrepresentation or the need for educational STEM reform.

I've been told that it's about thinking differently, that the jokes are just trying to say, "Oh man, my brain sure doesn't work that way," but mathematicians and scientists aren't sharing Facebook memes about how useless writing and art are.  The most I've seen are more along the lines of, "Boy it's really frustrating how misrepresented we are and how poorly understood and distorted our work is when presented for public consumption."  Also, I don't really buy that our thinking is all that different.  When I tutored mathematics the problem really seemed to be more about attitude.  People didn't put effort into learning or doing mathematics because they thought it was hard, boring, or just not important to them.  With effort they picked up the concepts just fine, but the attitudes that surround math made them reticent in putting forth that effort.

Math students have often been taught in what one teacher of mine referred to as the GMTED or the "Give Me The Equation, D***it!" mindset.  Try to discuss the concepts behind the figures, the real meaning of the numbers and symbols and they shut down and demand you give them a simple formula so they can mechanically plug numbers in.  Math education is too often a "human programming" job, using drills, memorization, and routines to create humans that will carry out operations to compute a value.  This must change, but can't if people believe that actually thinking about math is something they're incapable of because, "their brain just doesn't work that way."

So I beg of you, respect mathematics.  Let's leave behind the antiquated views of math as prima facie unappealing as we leave behind the systems that have made thousands fail to understand the beauty and wisdom it contains.  Let's elevate our understanding of ourselves by doing meditative mathematics.  Let's elevate our understanding of the universe by understanding the language in which God wrote it.  Let's create a society that values this great field of human thought and endeavor that's gifted us the computer, engineering, and so much more.  Let's create an intellectualism that, to paraphrase the apocryphal inscription above Plato's Academy, lets none but mathematicians enter; not out of elitism or to exclude readers, writers, artists, and other so-called non-math people but in recognition that a complete philosopher will be mathematician in addition to artist, reader, theologian, writer, and more as he or she embraces all the many worthy areas of endeavor in the vast yet limited expanse of human knowledge.

From an Aspiring Medical Professional

I've always been a scientist.  Some of my earliest memories are wanting to use beakers, test tubes, & microscopes in school.  My mother tells me that one of my favorite toys as a child was an old radio I was allowed to disassemble and rebuild, being fascinated at how the pieces fit together.  I've always seen science as exciting and fun.  For most of the time that I understood the concept I've seen it as a noble pursuit as well.  "The glory of God is intelligence," I was taught, and science is a rigorous pursuit of understanding.

I've learned since then about the very human nature of this endeavor.  Learned things like how Newton's preference for a 'corpuscular' or particle theory of light, rather than the wave theory which works better, probably set back the field of optics a century or two, but few wanted to propose ideas that would dare contradict the great and powerful Newton.  I've learned this about religion, philosophy, sports, families, and just about everything else humans do as well, though.  These days science may have trouble acknowledging its limitations, but it does good and improves the human condition.  And yet the ranks of those who share this view are suffering loses.

This seems mostly in the field of medicinal and health sciences.  This rarely used to bother me, but it is more and more lately.  Maybe it's because I'm getting older and the issues are closer to affecting me and involving choices I'll have to make.  Maybe it's just because things that were more fringe in the past are getting talked about more these days.  Maybe it's because part of me agrees that this field of science is a lot more blurry than the physics and mathematics I originally studied, but entering into the field I'm seeing the strength of the science.  I'd be remiss not to have mentioned these possibilities in a writing about science, rigor, and emotion, but I don't think they're the reason.  At least not the primary one.

I am an aspiring medical professional.  I'm going into radiography or clinical laboratory science, depending on which program accepts me and a few other factors.  I feel like scientific thinkers, which would include many medical professionals and certainly myself, rarely make effective arguments that would entice someone not scientifically inclined to rethink their ideas.  This is likely because anecdotes, emotional pleas, and pithy quips will not change the fundamental forces of nature and therefore aren't the first thing reached for in scientists' mental toolboxes.  So it feels odd for me to speak about my emotional and personal reactions in the context of understanding biomedical science, but it may be just what some need to hear.

There always seems to be an edge of accusation toward the medical profession by those that eschew its methods.  It's difficult for me to say this as I don't believe it's intentional, but it is the truth.  The message is that the medical profession, and therefore medical professionals, is a bumbling ignoramus unwilling to understand the simple truths that should be instinctively understood, a shadowy or scaremongering elite seeking only power and control, or an uncaring power more interested in processing patients to collect their checks than healing them.  It may be some combination of the three, but these are the primary narratives with their implications laid bare and made plain.

I believe they are all wrong, but moreover I know they are all insulting.  I think this might be why I've been more affected by those who leave the ranks of accepted science for other conceptions of fulfilling medicine.  The secret message in those actions, words, and thoughts are that I don't care about my patients.  I do care about my patients, and I don't even have any yet.  I study hard and ensure I understand the concepts of my classes because I worry about making the wrong call and endangering someone's health.  I've listened to opposing views, considered the ideas, and always been unconvinced that those methods and practices would best serve the sick or the healthy.  I want to get paid for application of the skills I'm acquiring, sure, but I did when I worked other customer service positions as well and was still driven to serve the client.  When I see someone taking medical risks I'm annoyed because so often those risks are unnecessary, and I care about them.  So, from an aspiring medical professional, please reexamine your ideas if you're forgoing modern medicine.  Please give me and my ilk the benefit of the doubt and some level of trust.  We're absolutely doing our best to deserve that much.

Expressing Curiosity in Science

As a student of the sciences, mostly physics and recently medicine, I often will get caught in discussions of 'what is science?' as in a recent lab class.  I often resist engaging in these because I feel they too often are trying to promote idealized views of this particular human endeavor.  The humanity of the enterprise is forgotten in trying to give it good PR.  Most recently I did have one thought on the subject that seemed of value though: science is one expression of the curiosity of mankind (and remember man in this context is gender neutral).

We have an interesting relationship with curiosity.  The most well known phrase in regards to the subject is, "Curiosity killed the cat." I like to use the snappy rejoinder, "Well we better try to satisfy curiosity before that psycho goes off killing small animals to get their jollies then," but I recognize that the implication the phrase carries is to take caution with exploration and intuition.  As should be obvious to the reader at this point I don't agree with this mentality, but that said it's never wise to throw caution to the wind entirely and we should certainly ensure that our actions properly reflect  the correct balance of our desire to know something and other desires, such as comfort, safety, and community.

I still think that on balance curiosity is a virtue.  I believe in the freedom of information, an understandable order and structure underlying the universe at large, and that challenges to one's thoughts and beliefs will eventually improve them if faced head on and not ignored.  Curiosity lets us promote and explore these things.  Consider what the opposite of curiosity might be.  A quick look in the thesaurus brings up disinterest, indifference, perhaps even apathy.  Does anyone really want to be with people or build a society with these qualities?

Science is one way in which we express our curiosity.  It's perhaps the simplest, being based on straightforward observation of a community.  Laws and theories are only useful in as much they can make verifiable predictions and only believable in as much as they are supported by data and experiment.  This does make science somewhat limited in scope as most will recognize that there exist things that simply can't be proven one way or the other, but the pragmatic and skeptical mentality is a powerful tool for any thinker.

Science is of course a human enterprise, though.  This expression of our curiosity is subject to the same forces that might make a desire for self improvement into greed or a longing for love and community into exclusion.  Having guiding principles in a great human venture never means we follow them perfectly, or if it does it probably means we're losing sight of other virtues.  The guiding virtues of science - observation, falsifiability and testability, and of course curiosity - will indeed help us in our endeavors to become virtuous.

Sharing an Idea

Since I just got married I've been posting about marriage, relationships, and the like lately and I've seen an interesting thing happen, people responded.  I got comments, page views, and people telling me how much they liked my last post.  It's always nice to hear feedback from others and find out people are actually paying attention.  Still, part of me is actually a little disheartened by this surge of interest, because it carries an implication that people didn't read, or just plain didn't care about what I was writing before.

I wouldn't have predicted my newer writings would have eclipsed some of my others, because I find them more personal in scope.  Curiosities of my personality, musings on relationships (of which there's already enough literature to fill several libraries of Alexandria, and what I bring surely cannot be that novel), and altogether introspection on how I feel during such a pivotal moment of my life.  Maybe I should be honored and awed that others care about enough that they love my introspection.  Maybe they feel they're getting to know me better through my writings, and that's what engages them so deeply, and again I should be cheerful to know people like getting to know me.

But perhaps that's also just it.  Yes that personal side who loves his beautiful new wife and was eager to marry her is there.  Yes, I have thoughts and feelings about romance and love like most everyone else.  Yes, I am relate-able in those ways and those are all important to me.  There are other things that are deeply meaningful to me, though.  These are things that run from boring to meaningless to spurned to intimidating (and therefore avoided as much as possible) to much of the population in which I live.

Often what I write blog posts if not necessarily to change vernacular perspective at least to offer a different one.  I find topics of science, mathematics, and technology - and especially the public's interaction with these - of immense importance.  These are the ventures of human endeavor that will shape the future to which hurtling toward us faster and faster every day (ponder a moment on the technologies changing the way we communicate and relate to one another that have come to fruition in the last ten to twenty years) and the lijera (Spanish for lightness, but possibly carrying an extra connotation or two that made me want to use it in place of an English word here) with which people take these today is distressing to me.

I was once asked by an aunt something like, "What's it like to be as smart as you are?"  My answer was a jocular but wistful, "Lonely," and then by way of explanation, "When I talk about something that I find fascinating and then see the eyes of whomever I'm speaking with glaze over what do I do?  Pretend something important to me isn't or speak without regard to a fellow human being."

The Truth Hurts, Bring on the Pain!

Thinking a little just now I had the thought, the truth really does hurt. Why? There's more than one reason, I'm sure, but probably more than anything because it forces us to see our preconceptions, our beliefs, our actions in a different light. Sometimes it's with generalizations, a researcher who studies mercury and really thinks of it as his (or her since I live in the blasted p.c. society that won't allow the continuation of linguistic conventions such as using male pronouns as representing a generic male/female person) life's work may be frustrated by people saying most metals are solid at room temperature. He may react thusly, "But what about mercury? Possibly the most useful and important metal because of <> is a liquid, so how can you say that." It might just be denial too. Someone who has strong opinions about or an emotional investment in something requires a good deal of humility, courage, and honesty to admit that something is true when it doesn't match what their ideals or preconceptions are. It could be simple linguistic totalitarianism. Someone who loves jazz may take offense to the comment, "They just played twelve different songs at the same time," though really this comment may have some accuracy if all the players were improvising together. The same thing could be said in a slightly different way that would be fine, "That was amazing, it was like they all played a different song at the same time." This probably comes up a lot in the current political correctness atmosphere.
What I really want to say is that the sting of the truth can be good. We generally mentally flee from ideas that are difficult to sync with our current ones, but we should accept new ideas and consistently revise our current ones. Hearing things which cut us to the quick tempts us to marginalize the speaker, idea, or background from which it comes. The human species must fight this temptation and learn flexibility in our mentalities, conceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. Unlike on our human bodies which is scarred from a cut, a piercing comment to our souls can cause us to improve ourselves. One who is promiscuous will naturally react with offense when he/she is said to be sexually indiscriminate. The best reaction for them is unnatural, to take the comment as a possible truth, analyze their actions and outlooks, and amend them according to how they wish to live their lives in light of this new insight.
"He who takes offense when no offense was intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense was intended is usually a fool." -Brigham Young. The offense reaction is an unfortunate one in human nature. It is generally the opposite of constructive and at best leads to festering anger, a grudge against some group or person. Perhaps we as human beings should learn to take the comment, "That offends me," as a comment more about the speaker than the subject. Let he who says it be commenting on his own lack of self-control and hot-headed reaction rather on the heinous nature of whatever the that referred to is. People are wrong sometimes, even then we should seek to understand their thinking, and perhaps change their mind through reason and debate. What we must realize, however, is that change is always hard, especially when dealing with personalities, mentalities, ideas, etcetera. If we are to expect others to do this difficult task with theirs we must be willing to do the same with ours.