Honestly, the biggest two problems I’ve encountered are:
“Oceania” is not a continent. It’s like seven smaller continental plates. Zealandia is more of a continent than Europe is. Similarly, Greenland is also more of a continent than Europe is.
if you’re going to count Europe, you also have to count India, and in reality, we should probably just talk about cratons and plates, not “continents”.
Okay, new scheme: Every continental shield is a continent. Everything not on one is terra incognita. Continental platforms are just delusional sea floor.
Certainly that classification won’t lead to any confusion.
You seem to be assuming that continents are defined based on plate tectonics? Which they definitely aren’t since they predate our understanding of plate tectonics by centuries.
Yes it’s a flawed system. In particular it’s Europe-centric and kind of breaks down with Asia’s borders with Europe and Oceania being relatively arbitrary. But trying to retroactively make it fit some kind of “objective” definition is IMO the wrong approach. We don’t need the 5-ish continents to be “fixed” because their definition is unserious and of little consequence. As long as we’re cognizant we can just move on with our lives and use more precise descriptors (e.g. “The Middle East”) when needed.
No, you misunderstand: I am claiming that the only valid way to define continents is using the best available scientific understanding at the time. The idea of “continents” as defined by laypeople is bullshit because it does not conform with consistently-defined parameters.
There is a geological definition of a continent, which is, effectively, “a portion of a tectonic plate which is thicker and less-mafic than oceanic crust, formed by volcanism and accretion.” This definition has utility.
To pretend that definitions can’t change is ridiculously prescriptivist. It’s just a failure of the educational systems available that few learn a better definition than “whatever old dead white guys said was a continent”. Are you suggesting that we should have come up with a new name besides “element” when early chemists started realising that “fire”, “air”, “earth”, “water”, “wood” and “metal” were not, in fact, the most basic building blocks of reality? Old outdated terms can and should be applied to new classifications which better comport with our best understanding of reality.
When plate tectonics was developed, the geological community quickly accepted, for instance, that Europe was no longer its own continent, but also that New Zealand was. I am suggesting that anyone claiming there are six or seven continents is precisely like someone claiming there are nine planets, or four elements. It’s not only not based off of the best available scientific classifications, it’s also so reductivist as to be literally useless. Anyone who doesn’t know that fire is not an element needs to retake secondary chemistry, because their understanding of the world is flawed at a basic level. Anyone who thinks there are five, six or seven continents needs to be introduced to better, more up-to-date definitions.
Honestly, the biggest two problems I’ve encountered are:
Okay, new scheme: Every continental shield is a continent. Everything not on one is terra incognita. Continental platforms are just delusional sea floor.
Certainly that classification won’t lead to any confusion.
You seem to be assuming that continents are defined based on plate tectonics? Which they definitely aren’t since they predate our understanding of plate tectonics by centuries.
Yes it’s a flawed system. In particular it’s Europe-centric and kind of breaks down with Asia’s borders with Europe and Oceania being relatively arbitrary. But trying to retroactively make it fit some kind of “objective” definition is IMO the wrong approach. We don’t need the 5-ish continents to be “fixed” because their definition is unserious and of little consequence. As long as we’re cognizant we can just move on with our lives and use more precise descriptors (e.g. “The Middle East”) when needed.
No, you misunderstand: I am claiming that the only valid way to define continents is using the best available scientific understanding at the time. The idea of “continents” as defined by laypeople is bullshit because it does not conform with consistently-defined parameters.
There is a geological definition of a continent, which is, effectively, “a portion of a tectonic plate which is thicker and less-mafic than oceanic crust, formed by volcanism and accretion.” This definition has utility.
To pretend that definitions can’t change is ridiculously prescriptivist. It’s just a failure of the educational systems available that few learn a better definition than “whatever old dead white guys said was a continent”. Are you suggesting that we should have come up with a new name besides “element” when early chemists started realising that “fire”, “air”, “earth”, “water”, “wood” and “metal” were not, in fact, the most basic building blocks of reality? Old outdated terms can and should be applied to new classifications which better comport with our best understanding of reality.
When plate tectonics was developed, the geological community quickly accepted, for instance, that Europe was no longer its own continent, but also that New Zealand was. I am suggesting that anyone claiming there are six or seven continents is precisely like someone claiming there are nine planets, or four elements. It’s not only not based off of the best available scientific classifications, it’s also so reductivist as to be literally useless. Anyone who doesn’t know that fire is not an element needs to retake secondary chemistry, because their understanding of the world is flawed at a basic level. Anyone who thinks there are five, six or seven continents needs to be introduced to better, more up-to-date definitions.