Thinking Like an Astronomer

Followup (a bit later, after thinking about the fact this post needs a summary statement): Shorter "bad seasons" claim: "If you consider the word "seasons" without considering weather and climate, it doesn't mean anything, so it needs to be redefined in astronomical terms. Likewise, if you consider the word "dinner" and ignore the fact that it is made of food, and it gets eaten, the word doesn't mean anything, so it needs to be redefined in astronomical terms."

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomy blogger, actually responded to one of my comments on his post The Soooooooooooolstice, and I'm feeling irrationally pleased with myself. These Uber-bloggers somehow find time to post a lot of fun and informative posts, as well as conduct their professional lives, and maybe read some of the comments... to find time to reply to a few seems beyond the call of duty. So my post here is to summarize the gist of our conversation. If you take the time to read through to the end, I think you'll find a nice rewarding laugh...

In the original post, Phil starts off with this:

Tonight marks the summer solstice, the midpoint of summer (and what you’ll hear many people mistakenly call "the first day of summer"). The exact moment of the solstice occurs at 05:45 on June 21, but that’s June 20th in my part of the US (11:45 p.m. for me in Mountain time).

(Click through on the "...mistakenly call..." link to see his original post regarding "bad seasons," and his argument that summer, for example, should start on April 6 and end on August 6.) Now I don't know about where you live, but here in western Oregon, April 6 is absolutely not the "beginning of summer." Neither, as I point out in my comment, is June 21, most years. "Summer," in the sense of weather, activities people engage in, the clothes they wear, and biological activities, like flowers, fruits, bird behaviors and so on, typically really gets going around July 5. There is a semi-facetious saying in Corvallis that it will rain on July 4, then you won't see a cloud until September. (btw, the word "insolation" in the latter part of my comment refers to the total amount of incident light energy from the sun during some period of time.)

7. Lockwood Says:
June 20th, 2009 at 4:14 pm

I disagree with the “bad seasons” idea. Seasons are first and foremost climatic; the concept exists because the expected weather at various times of year have (and still do, to a lesser extent) determined what people have to do to survive. Where I’m sitting, at 3:00 Pacific time, we’re still having spring weather… and we usually are at the summer solstice.

If you want to talk about intensity of insolation, I’m on board. If you want to talk about the meaning of the word “seasons,” this is bad bad astronomy.

Phil responds,

48. Phil Plait Says:
June 21st, 2009 at 8:33 am

Lockwood (37): [actually, I was (7), but no biggie] I make a point in the linked article that defining seasons climactically is silly, since different places have different climates. In that case, why define them at all? In reality, having any hard and fast definition of seasons is rather silly, but if we’re going to do it, it should at least be somewhat logical.When people say “Today is the first day of summer” how is that any more right than what I am saying?

...which is really a claim that the word "seasons" has no meaning, so the "rational" thing to do is to define them astronomically, in conflict with the experiences, expectations, and conventions of the vast majority of people. I have little problem when astronomers want to redefine Pluto as a "plutoid," "plutino," "dwarf planet," "minor planet," or whatever damned term they've come up with in the last few hours (OK, maybe a little problem). But science is based on empiricism- the idea that first-hand experience which can be reported, replicated and shared, is a valid and important basis upon which knowledge claims can be built. And while, yes, experts such as astonomers deserve special status in terms of the validity granted to their knowledge claims in certain areas (as do geologists, electricans, farmers and so on in their respective areas), I argue that a culturally embedded word such as "season" having an astronomical correlate and cause does not give an astronomer license to redefine such a word in the face of the experience, the empirical evidence, shared and, yes, known, by the vast majority of the world's inhabitants who are not astronomers. In fact, carried to its predictable conclusion, such license might lead to some fairly unintelligible results. Science cannot answer all questions, and scientists need to understand the areas in which their opinions carry great weight (and generally they do), and in which areas their opinions carry no more than anyone else's. Too often, with respect to the latter, they don't.

59. Lockwood Says:
June 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm

Phil (#48) says: "I specifically say here that I am avoiding using weather in my reasoning.” OK, so let’s avoid referring to “fusion” when reasoning about stars. And the “different places have different climates” argument seems more than a little facile. Yes, Churchill, Manitoba has a different climate than Key West, Florida, but I’d be willing to bet that the climate is warmer in both places from June 21 to Sept. 21 than it is from ~April 6 to ~August 6. Another way of putting it is that August 6 to Sept. 21 is much more “summery” (sorry, another cultural reference that isn’t defined in astronomical or physical terms) than is the period from April 6 to June 21 for the vast bulk of inhabited extratropical areas in the northern hemisphere. Within the tropics, of course, “the seasons” aren’t a terribly useful concept; climate is much more contingent on regional geography than on the sun’s position in the sky. I didn’t bother getting into the heat inertia issue; I’m assuming that’s evident.

Phil, I can relate to your desire to nail things down, and your tendency to look for astronomical nails. Many of my physics friends tend to look at things the same way, and I tend to try to rationalize ways in which geology is the root cause of everything on earth. There is some truth and value in these endeavors, but to single-handedly declare that nearly everyone else is “wrong”, and a few astronomy nerds are “right”, with respect to what I think we agree is a culturally-based word, is at best silly. At worst, it’s heavy handed overreaching, and it’s the kind of thing that makes many people hostile to science.

Looking back, this seems to have a sterner tone than I’d prefer, over an issue that (again, I think we agree) is pretty trivial. So. Here are my suggestions for clarifying and physically defining common cultural concepts with an Astronomical and Physical Approach:

*Colors will no longer be named; we will teach people to refer to them by their frequencies. So, for example, “yellow” will henceforth be called “589 nm.” This has an added benefit in that people may come to comprehend that so called “microwaves” (which will now be called “0.1 to 10 cm”) are actually much less energetic or “dangerous” than visible light.

*ALL astronomical bodies that do not sustain fusion will be referred to as “STAR FAILs!” Let’s put this silly planet-plutoid-dwarf planet issue behind us for once and for all.

*The periodic table needs clarification too; it just keeps getting more and more cluttered:
1-Hydrogen; 2-Helium; 3- Metal. This will allow even kindergartners to memorize the entire thing.

*All physical entities will be referred to by their masses and appropriate stoichiometric chemical formulae. Care must be taken to calculate the molar proportions rather than mass proportions. Living entities should probably be designated as “O” for organic, 15 (see below). Non-living matter resulting from the death of a once-living entity will be likewise be distinguished with a “16″ notation, for “post organic.” Using myself as a simple example, I should henceforth be addressed as (roughly) 100kg H10M6(15). Post mortem, I will be recalled by the same designation, but my corpus will be referred to in the present tense as 100kg H10M6(16)

*Musical Tempos will be redefined in terms of a range of pulsars. I have provided the groundwork for this conversion by finding the periods of three well-known examples, but I leave it to others more musically and astronomically knowlegeable to fill out the list and match them to corresponding passages of music. The notation in sheet music and scholarly research should use the appropriate astronomical designations (in parentheses below), rather than their common English names:
Crab Pulsar 0.033403347 s (PSR B0531+21)
Vela Pulsar 0.089298530 s (PSR B0833-45 or PSR J0835-4510) (Phil, why does this object have two designations?)
Vulpecula Pulsar 0.144457105 s (PSR B1937+21, sometimes written as PSR B1937+214) (!!!! Again? This isn’t science!)

*Musical notes will henceforth be designated by frequency (rather than by wavelength, to keep music distinct from light). Who was the dingbat that used letters, which aren’t defined physically, to describe music, which is first and foremost a physical phenomenon of both Stars and STAR FAIL’s! (the latter provided they have atmospheres of H, He, and/or M)? So, for example, “middle C” will now be referred to as “261.626 Hz.”

*Speaking of letters, this system is entirely culturally-based and needs to be brought up to tight, Mathematical Standards, worthy of being described as “Science.” Here’s my suggestion: each letter will act as an equivalent digit in a base-26 numerical system. So “and” represents 1*676 + 14*26 + 4 (base 10, our “native,” cultural base. We’ll work on that cultural influence later), or 1044. 1044 has a variety of meanings, which can be represented by using sub- and superscripts (though not in the word processing utility I’m working on at the moment. 1044 can act as a conjuction, it can imply addition, and it is a logical operator. Converting the English language to its base 10 equivalent will effectively and logically convert all discussion in that language to a series of calculations- the accuracy and truthfulness of which can be simply and quickly tested with a mere calculator. No more spin zone. No more propaganda from the anti-science and science illiterate. The lies and avoidance of truth will no longer be possible! Puntuation is currently an unresolved problem, but enormous strides forward are expected from research currently underway.

*59652913561263617075549096264307084079455801938361738358923655435811552058147864122353443649639716784400771576141209772902202108078488373916028244903442647165934131977275948863087418648117641170122682307457462723568109898015081853809981375829396585665877567916977028682128266523866003598288292833816021013365412145228216203929934362636329144955636452376456556101762425296838346077430234990492683304856422521039426434861251458277994404199298055351471264064605194256381720439383430595227533471599253061578119862561865563128521416631344602521883741585485772643807901614263856755

*(Hope you enjoyed this discussion. I did)

There is plenty more to be said about this kind of issue- libraries full of books worth, in fact. I'm not going to write them today.

Followup 2: I went back and reread the "bad seasons" post, and one bit I had missed before popped out, which I think deserves recognition. Phil makes the argument that daylight duration is the important component of the concept of seasons- which I basically acknowledged when I remarked on the intesity of insolation. However much that metric might appeal to a person whose data is best acquired at night, I would argue that for the vast bulk of us, the prevailing weather and climate is more of a factor in our lives from season to season than is the duration and position of the sun's passage across the sky. Additionally, the climate component, whatever it might be at your location, is better aligned with the traditional seasonal divisions than with Phil's choice.

Part II here.