🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov8.210316.5922@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, arodgers@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Angus H Rodgers) writes:

|> 
|> 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. :-)

Ah yes.  The ultimate academic bugaboo:  funding.  Everything (even your
taxonomy of cognitive disciplines) must be a slave to funding.

|> 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.

But what title is *that* title.  Is it the title of being *useful* or
the title of being *science*.  Even the hobgoblins of funding don't
treat these as equivalent.

|>    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).)

I don't have a problem with this.  But notice that it makes
CS a subdiscipline of mathematics -- and it still lacks significant
distinguishing features of the genuine sciences.  It also suggests
that there is (or ought to be) a distinction between CS and
software engineering along the lines of the distinction between
(say) applied (or even pure) mathematics and civil engineering.
But this does not seem to be the case.  And it isn't obvious
that it should be.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm