I wrote this originally in 2001, and recently there is news that Pluto just might be upgraded once again, but my basic point here is just as true today. Enjoy!

Although my academic inclinations have always been with the liberal arts, I’ve been impressed since elementary school by how much more specific and quantifiable the fields of math and science are. There is something appealing about only one right answer to a math problem and only one correct way to balance a chemical equation. Even the most nebulous concepts in science seem safe from the usual Doubting Thomases. As Albert Einstein cleverly noted: “Tell a man there are three billion stars and he’ll believe you. But put a ‘wet paint’ sign on a park bench and he’ll have to touch it — just to be sure.”

That is why I find the recent controversy over the status of the planet Pluto so disheartening. Recently astronomers have been trying to decide whether the planet should now be reclassified and downgraded to the status of a mere “trans-Neptunian object.” Just last month the prestigious Hayden Planetarium in New York removed Pluto from its planetary display. The director explained that Pluto never fit the planetary mold: it’s neither rocky like four planets nor gassy like the other four, and its size is even smaller than seven measly moons in the solar system, including Earth’s.

We studied the planets in my fourth-grade class and had to memorize their order from the sun. I was enchanted with the phrase that prompted the nine planets in their proper order: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and so on). Now we learn there’s no Pizza — No Pluto anymore. Sigh.

I feel for Pluto. As an English professor, I’ve been witness to this same trendy reclassification — be it upgrading or down — with the stars of the literary firmament. During the nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott was thought to be one of the greatest novelists; today, we note that he is not only unread but virtually unreadable. Edgar Allan Poe’s works during most of his lifetime were considered nonsensical and monstrous; today he is in every literary anthology from middle school on and ranked as a baroque genius by most critics.

And, of course, in our own lives people who at first seem to be the very sun of our emotional universe can become nothing more than a comet that blazes and then vanishes. We are constantly relearning the lesson that those who seem an anchor in our lives can sometimes be revealed as morally rudderless.

This is the most common theme in literature: appearance versus reality. No writer expressed it more succinctly than Shakespeare. In the tenth line of Macbeth the witches chant: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” If only we lived in a world were fair always looked fair and foul always appeared foul — indeed where appearance was reality — what a boon it would be for making choices.

But what a loss it would be for literature. Literature must deal with personal morality, the agonizing decisions we all must make that eventually determine the quality of our character. And here the certitudes of science and math are nowhere to be found. But the decisions we make certify whether we shall be remembered like Sydney Carton as a shining star or, like poor Pluto, a demoted luminary.