I Want To See That Happen

And herein lies the problem; "continent" is not a scientific word. Or rather, different branches of science use it in different ways. Here are some "scientific" definitions of continent:

1. The linguist's definition: A continuous body of land; a large island. We'd have to quantify the size of "large", but if we use Australia as the standard (if it's the size of Australia or larger, it's a "continent") that would give us four continents: Afro-eurasia, America, Antarctica and Australia. Africa is an "artificial island" thanks to the Suez Canal (so whether the count is four or five would depend on whether or not you include artificial islands), but the Panama Canal is not wholly at sea level so it doesn't count.

2. The geographer's definition: A large landmass (and it's surrounding islands) separated by distinct geographic (physical and cultural) boundaries from other continents. Here, "large" again needs tightening, and "distinct" could use some more stringent guidelines, because the "boundary" between Europe And Asia is anything but distinct, either physically or culturally in most places, and there are regions not traditionally designated as separate continents (such as Arabia, East Africa and the Indian "subcontinent") that meet this criterion much better than Europe does.

3. The geologist's definition: a section of continental shelf separated by a tectonic plate boundary; separate sections of continental shelf residing on the same plate (such as India and Australia) may be regarded as separate continents. Under this definition, the island of America is divided into three large continents: North America, Caribbea and South America, and several smaller continents; "North America" would stop just below Mexico but would include half of Japan and Siberia. The total number of continents would be eleven at a minimum, probably larger; this definition makes no mention of size. Indeed, everything on the west side of the San Andreas Fault could be considered a separate continent to North America, under this definition.

4. The historian's definition: established by tradition, and rooted in mediaeval beliefs about the nature of the world. A continent is whatever our ancestors happened to be pointing at when they said, "That's a continent".

So long as those separate branches of science don't talk too much to each other, the disparate meanings can happily coexist. It's only when linguists try to talk to geologists, or geographers with historians, that problems arise.


Not quite; you probably think water boils at 212 degrees, but I'm in Australia, and I think water boils at 100 degrees - because we use the Celsius scale here. Some scientists would say that water boils at 373 degrees, because they'd be using the Kelvin scale. It all comes down to definitions, and "science" offers just one of many possible definitions.

Further, boiling point depends on atmospheric pressure, which decreases with altitude. In Mexico City, water boils at 93 deg C (200 deg F). If the Aztecs had conquered Europe rather than the other way around, the "official boiling point of water" would probably be different.