Triceratops, and other things destroyed by science.

You'll be pleased to know that I learned many things today
First, those "rental books" at my school book store are not actually all that cheaper than real books, and I can't sell them back, even for the $1.24 I would get for the beat-to-shit "used" ones. I will not pay $900 for books. Barnes & Nobles (Tulane Edition), please stop trying to make me into a hobo.

Bastards.

Second, the triceratops isn't actually it's own species, just the juvenile form of a dinosaur called a Torosaurus! Note that this is confusing in its own right, because technically "Torosaurus" is incorrect nomenclature, and so the Triceratops is still a species, just not the species as we know it, because it looks different when it's older... Or something.

Correct.

Incorrect (and vaguely creepy).

Science fucks with everything we take as truth, which is why dumb people are very frightened by it. I would be, too, if I didn't have a brain. Take, for instance, Pluto: small, icy, pretty much useless on all counts.

Poor, worthless little Pluto.

You can't cuddle Pluto. You can't call Pluto pet names. You can't even really see Pluto, except as a tiny, dark, faraway dot. Which shouldn't even really count.

Exception to the rule.

Nevertheless, people insist that somehow, Pluto and its "planet-ness" were an integral part of their world view, and they kicked up all sorts of fuss, much like when Galileo proved that the universe didn't revolve around the earth (and therefore people).

Heretics are the shit.

 Don't get me wrong: Mostly Very Evil Monkeys Sometimes Just Undress Nudists Passionately is a fabulous acronym. And I like to be proven wrong as much as the next smart person. But if things didn't change with time, we'd all be a big walking Geico commercial, wearing gazelle bodies for hats and eating things we picked out of our own hair.

And apparently always damp.

In any case, Pluto was reinstated, this time as a "dwarf planet" along with some other rando dwarf planets no one's ever heard of, including Eris, Ceres, Makemake, and Haumea (all of which are technically in our solar system, and some of which actually have moons and indications of water).

I'm thinking, Mostly Vagrant Emissaries Make Calamitous Shouts Just Under Neat Plastic Hampers Maybe. Catchy? Perhaps worthy of a song to go with?

It occurs to me that most of the problems that science seems to dredge up have to do with naming things. Creationists have a problem with fossil evidence in the context of "proving evolution" because the "intermediate" fossils they keep insisting don't exist do exist - just with names that indicate differences in genus.

Australopithecus, gettin' freaky.

One of the most confusing things about evolution, for most people, is that there isn't a step-wise list of "progress" from species to species. I'd say... of course there isn't. A.) because we shouldn't be thinking of it in terms of progress anyway (thanks to Plato, most of us think that way anyway) -

Dead guy fucking shit up.

... And B.) because the naming of species by human beings is a pointless, transistory, arbitrary, and often compltetly incorrect concept. You can't say, "Species A had an offspring that was magically Species B." You can say, "Species A and B share similar characteristics, and over time, the offspring of Species A start to more closely resemble Species B."

Speciation is NOT discrete. You will NEVER find a situation where an animal of one species gives birth to an animal of another species. The only reason we have species now is because they've differentiated, over time, to the extent where they are either reproductively or physically different enough to warrant being separate species.

Deep breath. But really. You see what I mean? People run around naming things willy-nilly - as though if they see something, it's suddenly real. But that's a human thing. Things don't become different, or special, once we've named them or categorized them or seen that they're there. And it freaks people out when the names change, because suddenly they have to shift. They have to start talking about things in a different way. They have to change their thinking, and that's scary for some.

Personally, I find that sense of newness - that inability to the know the truth, the identity, the "essence" of something - exciting. It means there's always more to know.