Was Pluto a metaphysical concept before it was discovered?

[KansDem]

In 1979 or 1980, I heard Clyde Tombaugh speak at the University of Kansas about his discovery of Pluto. It was a fascinating lecture about how astronomers believed there was something out there but could not see it. Guided by the premise that planets moved but stars didn't, he (and other astronomers) poured over thousands and thousands of photos of space until he found the two photos that showed a "dot" had moved: Pluto was "discovered."



My question to DU astronomers: Was Pluto a metaphysical concept before it was discovered?

[laconicsax]

1. No. It was a prediction based on faulty data.

The orbits of the ice giants suggested that a large planet beyond Neptune existed. Pluto was discovered, but didn't fit the bill. Later, when new data revised the masses of the ice giants, the large "Planet X" was falsified and people stopped looking.

[KansDem]

2. "The orbits of the ice giants suggested that a large planet beyond Neptune existed."

But was this belief a metaphysical one? Even if Pluto wasn't the "right one?"

I know that Pluto was "downgraded" as a planet, but if one believed something was out there that affected Neptune and the like but could not be observed, then this "Planet X" was a metaphysical one?

[laconicsax]

3. No. It was a scientific prediction, not a belief.

There's a difference.

[KansDem]

6. But wouldn't a "belief" precede a "prediction?"

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I need to make this distinction.

PlutoLowell's greatest contribution to planetary studies came during the last decade of his life, which he devoted to the search for Planet X, a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune. Lowell believed that the planets Uranus and Neptune were displaced from their predicted positions by the gravity of the unseen Planet X.<15> Lowell started a search program in 1906 using a camera 5 inches (13 cm) in aperture.<16> The small field of view of the 42-inch (110 cm) reflecting telescope rendered the instrument impractical for searching.<16> From 1914 to 1916, a 9-inch (23 cm) telescope on loan from Sproul Observatory was used to search for Planet X.<16> Although Lowell did not discover Pluto, Lowell Observatory (690) did photograph Pluto in March and April 1915.<17>

In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh, working at the Lowell Observatory, discovered Pluto near the location expected for Planet X. Partly in recognition of Lowell's efforts, a stylized P-L monogram ()— (the first two letters of the new planet's name and also Lowell's initials), was chosen as Pluto's astronomical symbol.<15> However, it would subsequently emerge that the Planet X theory was mistaken.

Pluto's mass could not be determined until 1978, when a satellite was discovered. This confirmed what had been increasingly suspected: Pluto's gravitational influence on Uranus and Neptune is negligible, certainly not nearly enough to account for the discrepancies in their orbits.<18> In 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.

In addition, it is now known that the discrepancies between the predicted and observed positions of Uranus and Neptune were not caused by the gravity of an unknown planet. Rather, they were due to an erroneous value for the mass of Neptune. Voyager 2's 1989 encounter with Neptune yielded a more precise value of its mass, and the discrepancies disappear when using this value.<19>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell

Could one say then that Lowell's predictions were based on his beliefs and that suspicions about Pluto's negligible influence until confirmed were metaphysical?

[laconicsax]

7. No, you're making a common mistake.

When it says that so-and-so believed X, that's shorthand for the evidence led so-and-so to reason that X. Same thing with "suspected."

I'll use the story of how Neptune was discovered because it's, much clearer:

When astronomers recorded the orbit of Uranus, they noticed slight perturbations that couldn't be accounted for based on the 7-planet model that prevailed. They concluded that the only way to explain the orbit of Uranus was if another large planet was out there. It was a rational, logical conclusion based on the evidence. Adams and LaVerrier did the necessary calculations and told their observatories where to look. When the astronomers pointed their telescopes where the predictions had been made, they found Neptune.

So, when the orbit of Neptune was found to have slight perturbations which could only be accounted for by a ninth planet, teams started looking for it. It wasn't a belief that was being checked, but a logical conclusion.

[KansDem]

9. It seems metaphysics has taken on a larger role in science.

It's been awhile since I've done some reading on this subject (see post no. 8), but perhaps the Hadron Collider would represent a better example:

The Tevatron’s unflagging support of the standard model, though, has also been a source of great disappointment. Physicists need something beyond this framework, something that can explain why the Higgs, if discovered, has the mass it does. Extra dimensions beyond the four that people experience as space and time have been proposed, as has a new kind of symmetry hidden in the universe.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/334164/title/Last_Words

I would think multiple dimensions beyond time and space would be a metaphysical concept...

[laconicsax]

11. It's only metaphysics if you drop the distinction between science and philosophy.

[KansDem]

12. And that describes the state of "science" prior to the 16th and 17th centuries!

Before the "great scientific revolution."

I believe you answered my question(s).

Thanks! :hi:

[HereSince1628]

4. That would depend on whether you consider

some thing that is a projection (as in forecast) from analysis of empirical data metaphysical.

[KansDem]

8. That would closely fit my belief.

I've read several books on how the study of science may require delving into metaphysics.

Richard Morris' "Edges of Science: Crossing the Boundary from Physics to Metaphysics," and Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," are two such books. Both write on the need to consider metaphysics in explaining noumena.

[HereSince1628]

17. A concept that you might consider from ecology in a similar vein

results from the application of mathematics. Community ecologists consider stability analysis using mathematical properties developed through eigen-analysis. The properties of matrix algebra certainly existed prior to their application to ecological communities. Things such as "stable nodes" or "strange attractors" existed as philosophical/mathematical conceptions prior to their inclusion in discussions of community dynamics.

[ret5hd]

5. I think the only person qualified to answer this question is Boojata.

[MisterP]

14. or Plotinus

or the supreme weirdness at the Museum of Jurassic Technology
http://mjt.org

[saras]

10. Confusing "belief" and "opinion" is not helpful. Beliefs don't change with new data.

That is the primary definition of a belief - that you ALREADY have whatever you need to KNOW. New information isn't going to change it.

[Jim__]

13. There are different understandings of the meaning of "belief".

For example, here is an excerpt from wikipedia on belief (my bolding):

• Our common-sense understanding of belief is correct - Sometimes called the "mental sentence theory", in this conception, beliefs exist as coherent entities and the way we talk about them in everyday life is a valid basis for scientific endeavour. Jerry Fodor is one of the principal defenders of this point of view.
  
  
• Our common-sense understanding of belief may not be entirely correct, but it is close enough to make some useful predictions - This view argues that we will eventually reject the idea of belief as we use it now, but that there may be a correlation between what we take to be a belief when someone says "I believe that snow is white" and how a future theory of psychology will explain this behaviour. Most notably philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this particular understanding of belief.
  
  
• Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong and will be completely superseded by a radically different theory that will have no use for the concept of belief as we know it - Known as eliminativism, this view, (most notably proposed by Paul and Patricia Churchland), argues that the concept of belief is like obsolete theories of times past such as the four humours theory of medicine, or the phlogiston theory of combustion. In these cases science hasn't provided us with a more detailed account of these theories, but completely rejected them as valid scientific concepts to be replaced by entirely different accounts. The Churchlands argue that our common-sense concept of belief is similar, in that as we discover more about neuroscience and the brain, the inevitable conclusion will be to reject the belief hypothesis in its entirety.
  
  
• Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong; however, treating people, animals and even computers as if they had beliefs, is often a successful strategy - The major proponents of this view, Daniel Dennett and Lynne Rudder Baker, are both eliminativists in that they believe that beliefs are not a scientifically valid concept, but they don't go as far as rejecting the concept of belief as a predictive device. Dennett gives the example of playing a computer at chess. While few people would agree that the computer held beliefs, treating the computer as if it did (e.g. that the computer believes that taking the opposition's queen will give it a considerable advantage) is likely to be a successful and predictive strategy. In this understanding of belief, named by Dennett the intentional stance, belief-based explanations of mind and behaviour are at a different level of explanation and are not reducible to those based on fundamental neuroscience although both may be explanatory at their own level.
  

The first entry in the list implies that KansDem's usage is correct. Of course, that may not change your opinion.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

15. Worth Noting

that a 16-year old Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who was an amateur astronomer before becoming a horror/fantasy author and the 20th Century's most prolific correspondent, postulated the existence of Pluto back in 1906.

[laconicsax]

16. Did he postulate Pluto specifically, or a generic body beyond Neptune?

It was generally accepted that a large planet was beyond Neptune. Pluto wasn't that planet.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

18. His letter to Scientific American

dated August 25, 1906, Lovecraft wrote:

"In these days of large telescopes and modern astronomical methods, it seems strange that no vigorous efforts are being made to discover planets beyond the orbit of Neptune, which is now considered the outermost limit of the solar system. It has been noticed that seven comets have their aphelia at a point that would correspond to the orbit of a planet revolving around the sun at a distance of about 100 astronomical units.
Now several have suggested that such a planet exists, and has captured the comets by attraction. This is probable, as Jupiter and others also mark the aphelia of many celestial wanderers. The writer has noticed that a great many comets cluster around a point 50 units out, where a large body might revolve. If the great mathematicians of the day should try to compute orbits from these aphelia, it is doubtful if they could succeed; but if all the observatories that possess celestial cameras should band together and minutely photograph the ecliptic, as is done in asteroid hunting, the bodies might be revealed on their plates. Even if no discoveries were made, the accurate star photographs would almost be worth the time and trouble."

I'll admit that, since Pluto is in fact only 32 AU out, such aphelia might work out with another hypothetical dark body out there on the edge (Xena or Nemesis or whatever they are calling it), but you have to admit that for an adolescent amateur astronomer, in 1906, this kid was ahead of the curve. One wonders if we might have had another 20th Ct. astronomer giant had Lovecraft's health not failed and prevented him from going to university.

But then we wouldn't have had Cthulhu.
http://ih1.redbubble.net/work.4759457.4.lp,375x360,w,s,TWluaW9uIG9mIEN0aHVsaHUgaW4gQ2VyZW1vbmlhbCBNYXNr.jpg

[laconicsax]

19. Yeah, that's not predicting Pluto by a long shot. n/t

[Kennah]

20. Pluto baby, you'll always be a planet in my book

[tama]

21. Is

quantum state a metaphysical consept before, during and after it is measured, and what is time, anyway?