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From: condict@csd1.UUCP (Michael Condict)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Information sciences vs. physical sciences
Message-ID: <140@csd1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Dec-83 13:14:34 EST
Article-I.D.: csd1.140
Posted: Wed Dec 14 13:14:34 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Dec-83 02:57:22 EST
References: <427@eosp1.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 33

It should be pretty clear that some areas of Computer Science qualify as
a "science" by anyone's reasonable definition and that other areas,
specifically the theory of computation, program logic and verification,
mathematical semantics and complexity theory are studied completely within
the bounds of the mathematical paradigm.  As an example of "scientific"
computer science, consider experimentation with various algorithms for
paging in a virtual memory system, which might take place not by stating
and proving theorems about the algorithms but by carrying out actual physical
experiments (running benchmark programs using the various paging algorithms
and timing the results).

The problem is that to a lot of people the word science means any discipline
the study of which typically requires a Ph.D.  To them, when you say that
Computer Science is not a science, you are saying it is not of equal academic
stature when compared to, say, Physics.  Perhaps it would be better to assure
them quickly that you do not include Mathematics as a science either.
Actually, the above definition of science does need a word to go with it,
because we frequently want to use such a word in describing someone.  The word
discipline sometimes suffices, but to a non-academic it is often meaningless
(or connotes something like a religious order or Eastern philosophy).  And
then there is the problem of what to call a person who is engaged in the
pursuit of a scholarly discipline, scientific or not.  The word "academician"
is stuffy and implies working for a university, while the word "scientist" has
the obvious problem.  The word "scholar" doesn't distinguish beginning
graduate students from established pursuers of the discipline.

I don't know what the answer is -- I just wanted to help clarify the problem.

Michael Condict, Computational Scholar
New York University

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