While we're at it, don't forget the way "ices" and "metals" are defined in astronomy.
I think in general this will be a feature of observational sciences where things get named by the people who first document them, who may not have any good idea of what those things actually are. So Zooology and Botany might be good things to look to to see things being named terribly.
@Smoljaguar I'm willing to cut some slack in that case because "planet" isn't a category provided to us by nature in the same way that the brightness of a star is. It's a category that is fundamentally arbitrary
Add comment