🚀 go-pugleaf

In <Bx8yvo.6ty@unx.sas.com>
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:

>But one of my major points is that calling a discipline "not a science"
>is *not* (necessarily) a put down.  Hence my remark that "science" is
>often used primarily for its "honorific" value.  Both Zeleny and I
>have urged (and offered evidence) that mathematics is not (generally)
>considered to be a *science*.  Yet I believe that both of us regard
>it as somehow "purer" and in some sense "better" than a science:
>more fundamental, stricter criteria of adequacy, etc.

In your own mind, it may not be a putdown. But this is a dangerously
Pickwickian manouevre, because the trouble with calling maths "purer"
and "better" than science is that it plays into the hands of those who
would conclude that it is therefore "useless" -- and withdraw funding!
It pays to be pragmatic. :-)

Seriously, it's worth asking *why* the title of science is considered
so honorific, and then (and not before that) asking whether maths (or
computation) does or does not deserve that title.

My own humble opinion -- even humbler since reading Vaughan Pratt's
list of questions :-) -- is that taking the title of a science is a
claim to the possession of (in a loose sense) verifiable truths about
the real world. (But I'm repeating myself; and I haven't studied enough
philosophy to refine the definition much further.)

To make this post a bit more interesting, I'll venture a definition of
"computer science". I've tested (!) this against Vaughan Pratt's list
of questions, and it seems to bear up, or at least not to look too 
silly to be worth mentioning:

   Computer science is the science of discrete processes. The
   automatic computing machine -- which is one kind of discrete
   process, possessing a universal property which enables it
   in principle to simulate any other such process -- is
   conventionally taken to stand (both metonymically and
   synecdochally) for the whole field. So the problem with
   the phrase "computer science" lies not in the word "science",
   but in the word "computer": the tool has eclipsed its object.

Or, again:

   Computer science is discrete applied mathematics. But this
   is not to say that the discrete mathematics needed for the
   applications always exists before the applications do. So
   computer science is not applied discrete mathematics; the
   qualifiers do not commute.

(Comments? Flames? Alternatives? - Myself, I'm not sure whether
the adjective "complex" should somehow also be worked into the 
definition(s).)
--
Angus H. Rodgers  (PhD student), | arodgers@dcs.qmw.ac.uk  
Dept. of Computer Science, Queen | [ +44 | 0 ] 71 975 5241   
Mary & Westfield College,  Mile  | "But what is contact? No two points
End Rd., London E1 4NS, England  | are in contact." -- A.N. Whitehead.