Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok
From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: It looks like he's at it again!
Message-ID: <3455@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 23 Jul 90 12:04:53 GMT
References: <1990Jul21.004616.649@Stardent.COM> <388@e2big.mko.dec.com> <391@e2big.mko.dec.com>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 35

In article <391@e2big.mko.dec.com>, gillett@ceomax..dec.com (Christopher Gillett) writes:
> Physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, are all
  *******             *******
> real sciences.  There is a fundamental underpinning for everything,
> and everything within these fields procedes from a well understood,
> provable set of facts.

I have an MSc in physics.  That really doesn't sound like the physics I
know.  Physics has its own equivalent of exponential algorithms:  equations
which theoretically tell you what you need to know, but which you can't
solve.  In the kind of ocean physics I did, the whole art of "doing physics"
was deciding which bits of the equations to throw away, figuring out which
crude approximations were crude enough to compute with but not too crude so
that the phenomenon you're interested in disappears.  Then you go out to the
real world and start looking for excuses why it doesn't actually work like
that.  As for biology, if anyone has a theoretical derivation of the
scaling law brain_weight ~ body_weight**(0.64..0.70) I would be VERY
interested in hearing it.  (For that matter, I'd be very interested in
hearing about a workable definition of body weight; should non-metabolising
tissues like hair, scales, claws, and so on be included?)

_Real_ sciences are _messy_.  Even in mathematics: do you _believe_ in the
Axiom of Choice?  If it is now established that it's a provable fact or
follows from a well understood provable set of facts, then some of the
biggest names in mathematics who thought they had shown it was independent
of the other axioms of set theory must be spinning in their graves.

Let's keep things straight:
    invention and analysis of algorithms: computer science
    design and implementation of reliable programs: software engineering
    analysis of most existing computer architectures: hardware pathology
(:-)
-- 
Science is all about asking the right questions.  | ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au
I'm afraid you just asked one of the wrong ones.  | (quote from Playfair)