Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!edai!cam From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Is AI a proper science? The Cockton debate. Message-ID: <323@edai.ed.ac.uk> Date: 5 Apr 89 19:22:14 GMT References: <2691@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <813@htsa.uucp> <2705@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <3684@mit-amt> <2722@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Reply-To: cam@edai (Chris Malcolm) Organization: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Lines: 24 In article <2722@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes: >I know of no incident in the history of science where continued >romantic mucking about got anywhere. As A.N. Whitehead argued, all >learning must begin with a stage of Romance, otherwise there will be >no motivation, no drive to learn, no fascination. But it must be >followed by a stage of analysis, a specialisation based on proper Ok, accepting this for the sake of argument, what are the criteria to be used for deciding when to leave the "age of Romance" and enter the "age of analysis"? Gilbert is suggesting that (much of) AI is romantic sci-fi when it should be analytic. My guess is that (much of) AI hasn't yet sorted out its basic concepts, i.e., is in what Kuhn would call the pre-paradigm stage, and analysis under such circumstances would be foolishly premature, would it not? We wouldn't want AI to fall into the horrible trap of physics envy which so disfigured psychology, would we? - "Look Ma, numbers and equations, I'm doing Real Science now!" -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.edai 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK