Happy Percival Lowell's Pluto Day!

On Mar 13, 11:18*pm, kT wrote:
oriel36 wrote:
On Mar 13, 8:10 pm, kT wrote:
I hope you don't make any mathematical errors on Friday the 13th!

And according to Meghar's Scale of Planetary Mass Classification, yes,
not only is Pluto a Planet, but it's first in its own class of planets!

Plutoids! You will be assimilated!

(Don't forget, tomorrow is pi day for the mathematically challenged.)
This is unconscionable.

I know, it's terrible. Ceres is a planet too, with its own class in the
Meghar Scale of Planetary Mass Classification, head of its class even.

I can't wait until 2015 when all of this will be straightened out, and
then we can begin classifying extra solar planets in earnest again.

I'm beginning even to doubt the exact value of pi.

The astrology that is practiced by people in the sci.astro forums is
basically toxic while actual astronomy has been dormant for many
centuries but remains safe due to the necessary intutive intelligence
needed to appreceate and work with it,most of what they call
'astronomy' nowadays is pretty much a magnification exercise wrapped
up in an astrological celestial sphere bubble and the thinking to go
along with it.You can see this through the other responses which
reflect a cult phenomenon that is empiricism and its dominance.Not to
overly use the comment on the sterility of a communal approach where
the horror is that all observations now go into supporting the
'scientific method' rather than as a tool that it originally was
intended to be,albeit erroneously -

"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and
you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make
that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.
Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of
external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy
of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that
they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be
right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or
that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If
both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if
the mind itself is controllable what then?" Orwell 1984

What happens when people no longer respond to the most basic fact for
daily rotation through 360 degrees in 24 hours and how it was reasoned
out ?, how the orbital motion of the Earth was also reasoned out in a
particular way by Copernicus or indeed many other facts,premises and
conclusions that should normally be just common sense but are lost to
astrological pretension.

No civilisation can properly be called one should it choose to make
light or ignore its own astronomical heritage and this is what
happened and much of it is the fault of denominational
Christianity.Whether it was a Cusa,a Copernicus in astronomy,Mendel in
genetics or Steno in geology among others,the Church allowed its
valuable scientific tradition to be emerge as a separate entity in
order to attain its position as some sort of vacuous 'moral
authority',a particularly Arian stance that once was fought in the
early Church -

"the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian". St
Jerome

So ,what exists is empircism replacing genuine science and Arianism
replacing matters of faith/intutive intelligence and celebrate among
the weakminded as science vs religion or some other variation on the
theme.From a genuine scientific standpoint,the dominant empirical
position is more or less in line with what Pascal spoke of when
mathematicians run amok -

But the reason that mathematicians are not intuitive is that they do
not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and
plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well
inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of
intuition where the principles do not allow of such arrangement. They
are scarcely seen; they are felt rather than seen; there is the
greatest difficulty in making them felt by those who do not of
themselves perceive them. These principles are so fine and so numerous
that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to
perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are
perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in
order as in mathematics, because the principles are not known to us in
the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake
it. We must see the matter at once, at one glance, and not by a
process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree. And thus it is
rare that mathematicians are intuitive and that men of intuition are
mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat matters of
intuition mathematically and make themselves ridiculous, wishing to
begin with definitions and then with axioms, which is not the way to
proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so,
but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules; for
the expression of it is beyond all men, and only a few can feel it."
Pascal

The answer to the hoopla of trying to 'define' a planet is actually in
that excerpt from Pascal but the catch is ,you need intutive
intelligence to recognise it.