Oh, I know. You science-y people out there will probably jump on this post and remind me about how the IAU decided to revise the criteria for planethood, and at the end of the day, something about Pluto’s gravity and revolution path caused scientists to say, “Nope, recall all the textbooks and posters. We’re redoing the solar system.” Blah, blah, blah.
I don’t buy it.
Over the weekend, I paid a visit to a science museum that had scale models of the planets hanging from the ceiling in a display. But Pluto wasn’t hanging from the ceiling. It was a gray little ball, stuck, alone, in its very own glass encasement, with a description of why scientists no longer call it a planet.
Something about this strikes me as seriously wrong—or at least, deeply disheartening.
Once occupying the prime space of being the “last” in the solar system, this mass of rock and ice was the embodiment of mystery in the universe. Where was the farthest that you could go? Pluto. Of course, man hadn’t gotten there yet, but it was something to shoot for. Sure, there were other systems and galaxies, but there was something about Pluto that drew the attention of the imagination more than the inexplicably illimitable cosmos.
As a child, I used to imagine that the “air” on Pluto was a foggy purple mist; that it was very cold, but that whenever I visited the planet, my body was able to adapt immediately to the atmosphere; and that I could journey around the entire planet in the course of an hour.
(I also used to imagine that Saturn was peach and that if I landed on it, I would sink through miles and miles of squishy stuff, somewhat akin in texture and mass to peach applesauce, until finally I reached the core of the planet, which was hard like a peach pit. And then I was trapped until the alien residents of Saturn decided that I wasn’t a threat and decided to help me. But that’s another story.)
The thing that gets me is that scientists don’t really know what’s out there. Kuiper Belt. That’s the current story. So there’s more stuff they think they see. Great! But why, I ask you, is it necessary to remove the mystery and beauty of something that, for all this time, we have all believed to be one of the immortal watchers of the solar system? What is accomplished except that we mortals are given greater cause for disillusion with science and its ability to verifiably tell us anything?
In The Discarded Image C. S. Lewis laments the change that the word “know” has undergone as a result of society’s shift towards embracing scientific empiricism—and its subsequent effect upon our ability to perceive reality:
“The mathematics are now the nearest to the reality we can get. Anything imaginable, even anything that can be manipulated by ordinary (that is, non-mathematical) conceptions, far from being a further truth to which mathematics were the avenue, is a mere analogy, a concession to our weakness. Without a parable modern physics speaks not to the multitudes.”We “know” more facts and figures now. We have instruments to measure density and gravitational pull, and we track planetary orbits with an ease that our Greek fathers could not have fathomed.
But we don’t see the planets. (Or dwarf-planets, if you must.) We have lost the mystery and beauty of these things in our search for some way of quantifying what it is that we see.
And I can’t do it. I won’t fight it (much). But I can’t be one of those people who can let go of Pluto that easily.
6 comments:
Maybe you'd be interested in this shirt
Actually that's not the one that I have seen. The one I was looking for said something like "When I was little there were 9 planets" but I couldn't find it.
Though I did find out that there are a LOT of Pluto T-shirts!
What I find most interesting is that you have spent time thinking about the planets and visiting them. This is, inevitably, why you are a writer and I am not.
I totally want a shirt that says, "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet." It's good to know that other people feel the same way about it that I do (at least, enough to make T-shirts).
I read this Lewis quote tonight on my iGoogle page and thought it was appropriate to go along with your post:
"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid. . ."
Aha! Found it
"...we mortals are given greater cause for disillusion with science and its ability to verifiably tell us anything."
Don't forget that for much of history, everyone, including scientists, "knew" that the earth was flat until a dreamer named Cristóbal Colón proved them otherwise.
;)
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