The folk taxonomy was based on what an object orbits, making satellites out to be non-planets and ignoring most asteroids. Astronomers continued to keep primaries and moons classed together as planets and continued teaching that taxonomy until the 1920s. The astronomical community lost interest in planets ca. 1910 to 1955 and during that period complacently accepted the folk concept. Enough time has now elapsed so that modern astronomers forgot this history and rewrote it to claim that the folk taxonomy is the one that was created by the Copernican scientists. Starting ca. 1960 when spacecraft missions were developed to send back detailed new data, there was an explosion of publishing about planets including the satellites, leading to revival of the Copernican planet concept. We present evidence that taxonomical alignment with geological complexity is the most useful scientific taxonomy for planets. It is this complexity of both primary and secondary planets that is a key part of the chain of origins for life in the cosmos.

Moons Are Planets: Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science

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Comments: 68 pages, 16 figures. For supplemental data files, see this https URLSubjects: History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Physics Education (physics.ed-ph); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)Cite as: arXiv:2110.15285 (or arXiv:2110.15285v1 for this version)Submission historyFrom: Philip Metzger Fri, 22 Oct 2021 18:46:55 UTC (2,566 KB)https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 Philip T. Metzger, William M. Grundy, Mark Sykes, S. Alan Stern, James F. Bell III, Charlene E. Detelich, Kirby D. Runyon, Michael Summers

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