It's the Taxonomy, Stupid!

My recent post about sorting a purple fork is a parable about taxonomy. Taxonomy is the scientific word for sorting things. And while it sounds simple, sorting can get complicated quickly, and is sometimes subjective. Which is why scientists try to define a taxonomic system, a universal way of sorting things.
You're probably familiar with this system, at least in terms of biologic taxonomy. For example, plants and animals are part of different kingdoms. Delving deeper into taxonomy, cats and dogs are sorted into different families. If you want to break that down further, everyone can see that a chihuahua has some things in common with a Great Dane, but they definitely aren't the same thing.
In order to get a better grip on taxonomy, and taxonomic changes, I called my friend Dr. Paul Valentich-Scott, curator of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. He knows more about clams than just about anyone on Earth. When I asked him about taxonomy, he said, "It changes. All the time." He doesn't mean that different species of clams are evolving into something new all the time; he simply means that scientists sort them differently as they get new information.
One example of this he gave me was the Pacific littleneck clam. He told me that in doing some research into the history of scientists who had described this clam, the name was changed at the genus level. Before this research had been done, the scientific name was given by the person thought to have described it first. However, it turns out that it had been described by someone earlier, and precedence was given to the original classifier.
Another example he cited was a type of clam he is working on in the order pandora. As malacologists have made new discoveries about this clam, they have found that it makes more sense to change what was a single species into four different species. Again, the clam didn't change; scientists are just relabeling it. Paul told me that as we are doing more and more DNA research, this type of taxonomic splintering is more and more common.
I know this seems like a lot of biology for an astronomy blog, but by now I think you've figured it out. Today marks the 79th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh. Although it was celebrated as a planet then, it has infamously been "de-classified" as a planet. I could make this long post longer by telling you all about it, but I did myself a favor three years ago and made a movie about it. So watch the clip below and please remember that the movie is 3 years old. Since then, 2003UB313 has been named Eris; Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet (and even more recently as a plutoid); and two more larger-than-Pluto objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt (Haumea and Makemake).


Pluto: Planet or Not? from Krissie Cook on Vimeo.

The Parable of the Purple Fork

[This was partly inspired by Little Dudestronomer's experiences in intermediate dining techniques.]

Let's say that you have spoons. Lots of spoons. Some are big, some are small; some are silver, some are plastic, some are wooden; some are yellow, some are purple. And you keep them all together in your spoon drawer.
One day while you are preparing to eat, you see that at your place setting there is something similar, but a little different. It's clearly used for eating food, just like your spoons; but it isn't rounded like your spoons at the end. Instead, it has four sharpish points. But the other end is almost exactly like your spoons.
What is this new thing? You're not entirely sure about what to call it. But more importantly, you don't know where to put it. You have a spoon drawer, a bowl drawer and a cup drawer; no "random pointy sorta spoon thingy" drawer. But you decide that it's more like a spoon than a bowl or a cup. So you keep it in the spoon drawer for now. After all, it's used for eating food, it has a handle, and it's purple, like some of your spoons.
Time passes. In fact, lots of time passes. So much time has passed that you're now much older and much more sophisticated. You have a lot of drawers now; you have one for your spatulas and one for your ladles. You have so many drawers that it's time to reorganize. So you're going back through your drawers and you come across that purple fork.
By now of course you realize it's a fork, and you have many more of them. In fact, you have a whole drawer of nothing but forks. You think back fondly of your early utensil days and remember your wonder at this new device and you pause to ask yourself a question: where should you keep your fork?
On the one hand, it's just like those other forks, with its pointy tines. On the other, you've kept it with the spoons all these years; what's the point in changing things now?

Now, dear readers, a question for you: where would you keep the purple fork? Post your opinion in the comments section.

And bonus points to anyone who guesses where I'm going with this. It's an astronomical direction, I promise. All will be revealed next week.