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To: PatrickHenry
What is the nature or essence of a planet?

I like it when scientists argue in Aristotelian/Scholastic terms.

38 posted on 06/22/2006 5:00:49 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (When you find "Sola Scriptura" in the Bible, let me know)
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To: Aquinasfan; PatrickHenry; longshadow
I like it when scientists argue in Aristotelian/Scholastic terms.

Me too, because it shows the lack of validity of such attempts, and thus the failure of Aristotelian/Scholastic philosophical views in the first place.

Nature doesn't recognize the category "planet", nor is there any "Aristotelian essence of planethood", it's simply a manmade category, a shorthand descriptive term which, as the argument in the article makes clear, runs into more and more problems as one attempts to delineate its (imaginary) limits.

While it's convenient to say that "the Solar System has nine planets" (or some other number), it's based on an arbitrary and, ultimately, unrealistic way of classifying things. The reality is closer to a description along the lines of, "the Solar system has vast numbers of objects moving around in it, of various sizes (ranging from the vast down to the microscopic), with differing compositions, rotational axes, shapes, and trajectories, acted upon by the gravity of the Sun and other bodies in varying amounts." Cataloging the specific properties of various objects is much more informative, useful, and reflective of reality than any attempt to break them into arbitrary categories like "planet", "moon", "asteroid", etc.

The attempt to describe reality in Aristotelian/Scholastic terms all too often leads to occurences of the continuum fallacy and the paradox of the heap, which are indications that Aristotelian terms are fallacious ways of conceptualizing.

131 posted on 06/22/2006 4:55:21 PM PDT by Ichneumon (Ignorance is curable, but the afflicted has to want to be cured.)
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