Is Israel Democratic? Substance and Semantics in the ?Ethnic Democracy? Debate

Abstract

ASTRONOMERS RECENTLY DEALT WITH THE weighty question ofwhether to continue classifying Pluto as planet or to redefine it as transNeptunian object?' This debate did not involve disagreement over the actual nature of Pluto itself; all agreed that it was smaller than the eight other planets, that it was composed mainly of ice, and that it had an unusual elliptical orbit. The question was whether to define the concept ofplanet elastically enough to include such an object, while still excluding numerous other objects that also orbit the sun. For the astronomers involved, this was largely arbitrary, since nothing inherent to the term planet (original meaning: a wanderer) furnished operational guidelines for such distinctions.