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From: shafto@aurora.UUCP (Michael Shafto)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Is Computer Science Science?
Message-ID: <1073@aurora.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 13:52:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: aurora.1073
Posted: Mon Sep 21 13:52:53 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 05:02:21 EDT
References: <5113@sunybcs.UUCP> <6195@apple.UUCP> <5068@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <737@elmgate.UUCP> <2474@cvl.umd.edu> <13949@clyde.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: shafto@aurora.UUCP (Michael Shafto)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center
Lines: 21

Alfred North Whitehead called mathematics the "science of
abstract forms."  If that's too Platonic, then call it
"the science of abstract descriptions."  I think if you
adopt the position that Real Science is about Nature, and
that mathematics is not Real Science, then you'll eventually
end up (with no further help from me) saying either
(a) mathematicians don't make discoveries, or (b) they
make discoveries about the properties of formal systems
or systems of abstract descriptions, and that THESE are
not part of Nature.  If you follow (a), then you confine
yourself to a limited group of discussants who share your
idiosyncratic notion of 'discovery'; if you follow (b), then
you put the content of mathematics somewhere outside Nature.
Exactly where, I don't know.

Someone (perhaps Lakatos or Feyerabend) said that scientists
know about as much about science as fish know about
hydrology.  This is well illustrated whenever scientists
quit DOING science and start talking about it.

Mike Shafto