Distinction vs. difference

Once you know what distinguishes plants from other organisms, you can deduce the purpose of bark. (Image by Jeon Sang-O)

It’s possible to learn a whole bunch of facts about the world and call it science.

However, science isn’t just the body of knowledge we humans have acquired. It’s also a process. It’s a systematic way of thinking. If we can think like a scientist, it makes it a lot easier to learn the facts. It gives us a framework upon which to organize those facts.

In order to think like a scientist, we must ask good questions. A good question is a precise question. The answer doesn’t require a lot of explanation or qualification.

“What is the difference between plants and animals?” is not a good question.

A rose is red and a zebra is black and white.

An oak tree is fifty feet high and an ant is a fraction of an inch in length.

People talk; spinach does not.

Having turned up very little useful information here from such a broad question, we can refine it a bit: We could ask what characteristics all plants have in common that animals generally don’t share.

Plant cells have cell walls while animal cells do not.

Plants are green.

Plants have roots that keep them in one place whereas most animals can move around.

Now we’re getting at some of the things that make plants unique among living creatures.

An even better question is, “What is the distinction between plants and animals?”

To answer this, we consider why plants are green, have cell walls, and have roots.

We realize that all of these characteristics have to do with photosynthesis — they keep a plant upright and ready with all of the ingredients required to use sunlight to create sugar and oxygen.

Meanwhile, animals can have more flexible body shapes, run around, and not be green unless it’s advantageous for them. Why? They’re out scavenging for their food.

Suddenly we can see a clear distinction, like a magnet sweeping iron filings to one side while all of the other bits of metal remain.

We see that the distinction, the defining difference, between plants an animals is that plants make their own food, while animals eat plants and other animals.

All of the other differences follow from this distinction. It provides a context and a framework that we can use to better understand the related concepts.

And, of course, it was recognizing this distinction that allowed early taxonomists to begin to organize living things into categories.

When we confront a challenging problem in any domain, we can look for distinctions. At the Little Middle School, for example, we noticed that the distinction between students who turned their work in on time and students who did not was simply their commitment to doing so. There were many other differences between the two groups of students, such as the quality of their work, the progress they made, and their willingness to help others; ultimately, though, those differences followed from the primary distinction. Understanding this dynamic made it easier to support successful students and encourage other students to follow their example. We didn’t have to mess around with specific ways of tracking assignments, parental involvement, or study habits; we could focus our energy on what leads to a student making the commitment to getting their work done on time and encouraging that to happen.

What’s the distinction between dirt and soil? What determines whether two organisms are the same species? What do all of the successful egg drop projects have in common that the others do not? Looking for distinctions instead of simply listing differences helps us solve problems, organize our knowledge, and learn new things faster.