Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 May 12

= May 12 =

Why is Australia considered a continent and not simply an island?
I know that continents are defined rather arbitrarily but there seems to be strong consensus that it's a no-no to describe Australia as an island. Who decided that? Is there any support for considering The Americas one single continent instead of two? Zombiesturm (talk) 14:26, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The same consensus that tells us what is and isn't a continent also tells us what is and isn't and island: "An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water." - emphasis mine. One problem with that is then "what is the largest island on Earth?" becomes sort of malformed. If that is not satisfying, then please enjoy the world's largest island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island  :)SemanticMantis (talk) 14:38, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * apparently has to do with not sharing this with asia: Continental shelf 68.48.241.158 (talk) 14:56, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Some combo of being big and having it's own tectonic plate (see Australian Plate), although having a plate alone isn't enough, since Europe and Asia share a plate, so should be considered the single continent of Eurasia. Politics seems to be the reason why Europeans don't want to share the continent there.  Also, the North American plate includes eastern western Asia, but people there aren't about to call themselves Americans. StuRat (talk) 15:02, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * As the article you linked indicates. the concept of tectonic plates was developed in the mid-20th century. Please provide a citation for your claim that this had any effect on whether Australia was called an island or a continent. --69.159.60.83 (talk) 07:47, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I read the Q as "Is it considered an island or a continent, now ?", based on the words "are defined". Had the OP asked how they "were defined", and given a time period, then I would have attempted to answer the Q in a historical context. StuRat (talk) 21:59, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * For the Americas, well in English it is 2 continents and in many other languages it is one only (French "L'Amerique"). So, yes, the criteria is arbitrary, and not agreed on.--Lgriot (talk) 15:06, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * StuRat: are you sure the North American Plate includes Western Asian? The map in our article doesn't show it as being connected to the Middle East at all - which is shown as part of the Anatolian and Arabian Plates. Or have I misunderstood? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 15:50, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * My mistake, I meant "eastern Asia". Now corrected. StuRat (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Continent discusses the fact that the Americas are considered a single continent in some parts of the world. Dragons flight (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * As the Wikipedia article Continent makes abundantly clear, the demarcations of what qualifies a specific landmass as a continent are abitrary and capricious, based on a convoluted history of the classifications that go back to Ancient times, and which do not necessarily match any reasonable geographically consistent definitions. The scheme is actually based on the concept of the Mediterranean Sea being the center of the world (that's what it means, after all "Medi" = middle "Terra" = world).  Attempting to impose symmetry and order into geography, ancient geographers defined 4 landmasses which aligned to the 4 cardinal compass directions: North was Europe, East was Asia, and South was Africa.  That there was a giant ocean, and not a landmass, to the west to balance it out led to the notion that there SHOULD be one there, so Atlantis was invented to fill the scheme out.  When the scheme was devised, the boundaries between the landmasses were not well known; Asia and Europe were understood to be split by the Black Sea and Asia and Africa by the Red Sea, but beyond that the boundaries were not always very clear.  Fast forward some 2000-3000 years, and suddenly new landmasses (the Americas, Australia, Antarctica) start to be found, and the old tripartate "Europe-Asia-Africa" division starts to fall apart.  So the new landmasses were kludged into the system, with a "continent" being defined as roughly "A landmass Australia-sized or larger", though there is nothing particularly significant about drawing the boundary between "continent" and "really large island" in that way.  The notion that a continent has it's own tectonic plate is basically a retcon; the "seven continents" were well defined well before plate tectonics was an accepted (or even proposed) theory.  -- Jayron 32 15:37, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * To expand on that: the boundaries between Africa, Asia, and Europe have been redefined a number of ways. Herodotus, in his Histories considered the boundaries to be the Nile and (if I remember correctly) the Tanais.  The Europe/Asia boundary in particular has been redefined many times, and is essentially arbitrary.  Also, using tectonic plates to define continents would probably cause as many problems as it solves.  Tectonically, most of Europe and Asia (including half of Iceland) are one plate.  But the other half of Iceland would be American (as would parts of the Russian Far East), Turkey, Arabia, and possibly parts of Greece would all be a separate continents, and India would either be a separate continent or part of Australia.  The boundary between Europe and Africa may also become a bit screwy, as according to at least some studies, the plate boundary actually gives parts of Morocco to Europe and parts of Italy to Africa. Iapetus (talk) 16:25, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, it's not so much plates per se, I think, but continental shelves. If you take away all the water and political boundaries, a six-continent model (with Europe and Asia combined into a single continent) is fairly natural, not trying to come up with any rigorous definitions, just eyeballing it.
 * Of course no geologically-based definition is ever going to separate Europe from Asia. That one is pretty much nonsense. --Trovatore (talk) 21:10, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The answer scientists use is that Australia and New Guinea rest on the same continental shelf, but that Australia is the largest body--the "mainland" and is hence not called an island (noun) anymore than North and South America together would be called an island. You do hear "island continent", where the first word is used adjectivally. Note, there is a huge history of poltics in the name of those articles, which can be seen at the talk page. μηδείς (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I contributed to Talk:Australia (continent) a while back, until giving up in frustration. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:36, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Because geography is largely political: How a culture (and the academic elite of that culture) get to define various terminology has a profound effect on the perception of that place.  -- Jayron 32 17:49, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I have some doubt about the premise. I distinctly remember learning in school that Australia was both an island and a continent &mdash; the largest island, and also the smallest continent. --Trovatore (talk) 21:05, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Me too. But at some undefined later time, that changed.  I was also taught that Ayers Rock (as it was then known) is the world's largest monolith, but that claim is no longer made; and that the Sydney Harbour Bridge is (or was at the time) the world's longest arch bridge - always wrong, the Bayonne Bridge is longer and was completed a year earlier.  Teachers are not infallible.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:36, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Teachers are infallible. That's the first thing my teachers taught me. :-) StuRat (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Australia is about half the area of Antarctica, which together made up a single continent somewhere around 95 million years ago. I've often heard it as "the island continent", but it's all got to do with the fallibility of words. Australia is what it is, and whether we call it an island, a continent, or an island continent, it's still the same entity. The term "continent" has been around for close to 500 years, and it means "continuous land". That shifts the question to what does "continuous" mean? The answer is that it means whatever we decide it means at any given time. Like with Pluto, which went from a planet to a dwarf planet, just because somebody decided to redefine what the term planet means. Pluto itself did not change. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * ^^^^THIS^^^^ -- Jayron 32 12:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * To be terribly pedantic, the IAU didn't re-define the definition of 'planet', it defined it, as there had not previously been an official scientific definition. (FWIW, I didn't agree with the definition created.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 13:47, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That's not pedantic at all. I think it stunned millions of people, lay and scientific alike, to learn there never had been a formal definition of such a basic piece of terminology.  One can disagree with the definition they came up with, and definitions are not set in stone (such basic units as the metre and the second have both been redefined since they were first officially defined) - but surely it was an important and necessary step to actually create a definition.  I detest the wording "dwarf planet", because it misleadingly suggests Pluto is still a type of planet, when the whole point of the exercise was to create a proper basis on which to distinguish between planets and Ceres-like objects.  Nobody has thought of Ceres as any type of planet for a long time now, although it was originally included in the pantheon of planets.  But the outcome of the definition exercise was to actually upgrade (at least semantically) Ceres to a "dwarf planet", while downgrading Pluto.  The precise terminology they created has muddied the waters terribly, but I don't for a moment object to the creation of a definition of "planet".  It was long, long overdue. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:09, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * "Planet" already had a definition. Some scientists decided to fix something that wasn't broken. They do stuff like that. Like insisting that Brontosaurus had to be renamed Apatosuarus. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:27, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * A dictionary entry is not a definition. Do you think scientists look up a dictionary to see what they mean by "kilogram" or "ohm" or "parsec".  No, of course not. Science uses very precise, internationally agreed upon definitions of the things they deal with.  There was no such definition of "planet" until they decided to create one.  There really was a problem that needed fixing, if you read IAU definition of planet.  If you think you know better than the world's most eminent astrophysicists, please free to contact them with your views.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  05:37, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It is quite common for different workers to use different terminology. There is generally nothing wrong with that, as long as they make themselves clear.  The usual way (the correct way) for scientific language to evolve is organically, not by diktat of some governing body.
 * In this particular case, they chose a particularly terrible definition, "clearing the neighborhood", one that depends more on where a body is than what it is, completely contrary to what is intuitive in natural language. --Trovatore (talk) 06:15, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Since it was "internationally agreed upon" only by an oligarchy of scientists, the general public is under no obligation to use the term "dwarf planet" in reference to the planet Pluto. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:30, 14 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm 100% with you on that loopy terminology. But to continue to refer to Pluto as a planet, when it doesn't meet the definition that has been established, would be even more misleading.  Why do people carry such a torch for Pluto, but have completely forgotten about Ceres, which was listed as a planet along with Jupiter, Saturn and all the rest, for over 50 years after its discovery in 1801?  There are objects in the system of comparable size to Pluto (including Quaoar, Sedna, and Eris) that nobody has ever called planets, so if one is going to insist on calling Pluto a planet, one must accord the others the same status.  How about it?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:47, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure, Ceres should be a planet, absolutely. Also the Moon, Ganymede, Titan, a few others.  But the gas giants should not; they're clearly another class of object. --Trovatore (talk) 22:08, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Now we're getting a little too "off the planet" for my liking. :) --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:08, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind Wikipedia is a "global" project. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * For now, but it must be only a question of time before we have Klingon Wikipedia. Or Martian.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:54, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently you are unfamiliar with the sad history of the Klingon Wikipedia --Trovatore (talk) 03:52, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I meant a Klingon WP sourced from documents obtained from Klingonia. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:42, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Jazz_Jennings
What ethnic background is Jazz's descent of? Italian? Hispanic? Native? 50.68.120.49 (talk) 21:25, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I cannot find any reliable sources that indicate what ethnicity her ancestors may have been. -- Jayron 32 01:17, 13 May 2016 (UTC)