No, you misunderstand: I an claiming that the only valid way to define continents is using the best available scientific understanding at the time. The idea of continents is bullshit because it does not conform with consistently-defined parameters.

When plate tectonics was developed, the geological community quickly accepted, for instance, that Europe was no longer its own continent, but also that New Zealand was. I am suggesting that anyone claiming there are six or seven continents is precisely like someone claiming there are nine planets. It’s not only not based off of the best available scientific classifications, it’s also so reductivist as to be literally useless. As you point out, it is far better to use terms more specific terms in all cases.

It is! As long as you mean “Martial”, as in “involves battle”, and “arts” are understood to include “the creative application of random objects to different media in order to achieve the desired representation of reality”.

To actually answer your question: yes and no. If Europe is a continent, then India definitely is. Both are only separated from the rest of Eurasia by a collision boundary, and Europe’s collision boundary isn’t even active anymore, IIRC.

Realistically, if you’re counting tectonic separation, then the afar triangle is its own continent, as there’s an active divergent triple boundary splitting it off from the rest of Africa. The coast of California is a different continent than the rest of north america, because it’s split by a transform boundary due to the subducting remnants of the Juan De Fuca plate. New Zealand has been accepted to be its own continent for quite some time, since there’s a gigantic slab of continental crust underwater to NZ’s Northwest. Even still, the southeastern portion would be counted as separate, because the transform boundary which has created the South Island Alps splits the south island. Madagascar is its own continental crust, as is Greenland.

Really, if you want to understand the geological boundaries and origins among the areas of the world, I’d recommend considering all of the following five types of data:

Cratons (the really old chunks of continental crust that have just been floating and moving around, making up the continental cores, for the last 3.5+ billion years

Active Tectonic Boundaries (really useful for understanding why there are mountains, trenches, volcanoes and earthquakes where we observe them)

what you can see on a map, like rivers, mountains, isthmuses, and continental shelves (the only thing that our current definition of “continent” actually cares about)

anomalous hotspot volcanism (currently hypothesised to be caused by mantle plumes)

historical terranes (such as avalonia)

If you’re really interested in the tectonic boundaries of earth, check out the Concord Consortium’s “Seismic Explorer” online tool. Super fun.

So, TL;DR: the idea of a continent is bullshit, and purely cultural, just like our definition of a planet (see minute physics’ videos explaining why the moon should be a planet, and the IAU are bad at definitions)

Honestly, the biggest two problems I’ve encountered are:

“Oceania” is not a continent. It’s like seven smaller continental plates. Zealandia is more of a continent than Europe is. Similarly, Greenland is also more of a continent than Europe is.

if you’re going to count Europe, you also have to count India, and in reality, we should probably just talk about cratons and plates, not “continents”.

Bernie sanders is literally not even a democrat.

Bold to assume these kids know how to multiply.

xkcd.com/391/

Yeah, we were singing it a long time before the internet was a thing accessible to children. It was passed down by those who went to camps along with such songs as “da moose da moose”

I mean, in human terms, that tomato is a bloated uterus, already filled with zygotes and amniotic fluid.