What defines a flood
Mason Majszak, Abdallah Zaki, Omar Wani · 2026
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Description
Everyone pictures rushing water when they hear the word flood, yet Mason Majszak, Abdallah Zaki, and Omar Wani argue in this 2026 paper that the term has no settled formal meaning. The authors work at the border of philosophy and water science. They ask what parts of the idea are physical and what parts rest on shared judgments about how things ought to be.
Their answer splits the idea into layers. A physical flood is water pooled or flowing past a set rarity limit, where the limit itself rests on human judgment. Such a flood then counts as welcome or harmful only once people judge the water good or bad. That split, they argue, explains why towns can agree on the water yet disagree on whether to build defenses.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Mason Majszak, Abdallah Zaki, Omar Wani |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |