I totally agree. It is completely nonsense to say. In other languages it is different. I just know some Spanish, but they donât have a word for berries or nuts, it is all just fruit. (Forrest fruit for berries or dried fruit for nuts) but they donât call potatoes vegetables, but âtuberculoâ. Interesting difference, which i guess is because they have another climate and other plants.
We do just call it a vegetable in my language.
barsoap@lemm.ee âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
The core of the matter is that we have multiple, mutually incompatible schemes sharing in part the same terminology. Biology is not cooking, both fields care about vastly different things thus the categorisation scheme is different, thatâs the end of it. Culinarily, tomatoes have too much umami to be fruit. Botanically peppermint is an aromatic, I recommend you not put it into your soffritto.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Oh, this is actually a perfect example of the arbitreity of mapping systems!
A looong time ago on reddit, I got into an argument with someone who was doing that thing where you confuse the map for the object itself. We were mostly talking about the chemistry table. But anyway, he just could not see how a change in motivation, that is what the map designer finds useful, could change how the map is arranged.
I mean, I donât think this would convince him: he would just say the culinary version isnât real. But still, I really like it.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
I mean thatâs a pretty big difference right?
Like, the periodic tables mapping isnât arbitrary or alternate.
Like you canât actually map the periodic a different way and itâs in a sense âself evidentâ in a way arbitrary mappings arenât.
The periodic table itself is a kind of proof of quantum theory, or at least, strong supporting evidence. While it can be displayed differently, actually couldnât be arranged differently and the things we know about physics hold true.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Ah, there he is!
Just kidding.
The extreme usefulness of the one periodic table as we know it is why this is so hard to talk about. Philosophically, it isnât any different: it is arranged by human values for human consumption. I think there is likely a strong reason that alien values would converge here, but that doesnât really affect its arbitreity. The elements donât have value unto themselves, they just are.
And there are plenty of different ways to arrange it. For one, if all you care about are the metals for some reason, you can arrange the nonmetals out of it completely. You could keep a linear, alphabetical list because whatever work youâre doing is derived from chemistry but does not actually care about atomic values.
barsoap@lemm.ee âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Neither the biology nor culinary mappings are arbitrary.
Did you know that thereâs quite extreme agreements on what metals are? Chemists will tell you one thing and not be particularly unified in their response around the topic of semimetals, while astrophysicists have a very simple definition of metals: Anything that has more protons than helium.
Who is right? This has nothing to do with metaphysics (Iâve read a bit down the thread) as in âwhat is beyond physics, god, and stuffâ, but how we interpret our (scientific) observations. Neither definition of metals is more correct than the other, theyâre both maps drawn by scientists caring about vastly different things.
Back to the periodic table itself: Defining elements by protons has quite some predictive power but at the same time itâs a vast oversimplification of what actually goes on, ask any quantum chemist. It is rooted in quite hard science, but that doesnât make it ground reality. Actual reality is something we canât observe because to observe anything we first have to project it into our minds. All perception is modelling: Ask any neuroscientist. Or, for that matter, Plato.
stray@pawb.social âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
I agree with what you mean in kind of a broad-strokes way, but as individuals our subjective experiences of flavors can vary pretty wildly. Thereâs genetics, neurology, age, and habit/experience that influence our taste in terms of actually sensing the chemicals. Then thereâs what we see, taste, and smell just prior or during tasting that severely impact our interpretation of that chemical sense.
P00ptart@lemmy.world âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
âBotanicallyâ âculinaryâ âterminologyâ âbiologyâ and then you say umami seriously. Which is entirely made up.
barsoap@lemm.ee âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33580387/
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
You never had tomato pie? It would likely change your idea of what too much savoriness is.
barsoap@lemm.ee âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
I havenât but that sounds like a pie not a cake.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works âš3â© âšweeksâ© ago
Well, not all pies are desserts for sure, but a tomato pie is, unless you deviate from the usual recipes.
Besides, you didnât say that a dessert has to be a cake.
Thereâs also tomato jams, compote, and you can do a tomato cake mind you, a tomato cake is really more like banana bread, where itâs a flavoring more than the star of the show.
Point is that tomatoes can definitely serve in the same role as âfruitâ, just like some things that are sweeter can be used in savory dishes.
Itâs about the preparation, not the ingredient. I mean, look at bacon jam. Not a dessert, but itâs a savory and sweet spread thatâs used in the same was as fruit based jams. Onion jam is in the same range (and, as a side note, thereâs also onion and tomato pie which is more of a savory dish than a dessert, despite being fairly sweet anyway).
From a culinary standpoint, there are few ingredients that are fully excluded from dessert territory by virtue of having strong savory taste. Thereâs also not many excluded from entrees purely because theyâre sweet. Itâs all a wonderful spectrum of sweet and savory