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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7905 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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History, economics, and political science are real sciences even if they are not as rigorous as physics and it is difficult or impossible to run experiments in them. Sure, there is a lot of ideological bullshit in all three of those fields, but there is also a lot of rational analysis. The typical kind of academic history writing that I have seen isn't some barely disguised attempt to push a political ideology, it is more like a lawyer's arguments in a legal case that revolves around whether something happened on a certain date. It is true that there are taboos that prevent some topics from being widely brought up, but that does not mean that these entire fields are worthless.

Anything that has to include the word “science” in its name is not a science

Materials science

"Computer science"?

Famously neither a science, nor about computers.

Correct. Computer science is strictly speaking a branch of mathematics.

i like this paper (Computer Science: Not about Computers, Not Science) https://www2.lawrence.edu/fast/krebsbak/Research/Publications/pdf/fecs15.pdf

Huh. Never thought I would see my alma mater in the wild. The world is small, I guess.

Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that "computer science" is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. The essence of this change is the emergence of what might best be called procedural epistemology—the study of the structure of knowledge from an imperative point of view, as opposed to the more declarative point of view taken by classical mathematical subjects. Mathematics provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "what is". Computation provides a framework for dealing precisely with notions of "how to".

Harold "Hal" Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Or then there's this piece (from one B. Jacobs) back in 2005: ""Computer Science" is Not Science and "Software Engineering" is Not Engineering"

If the software discipline is "science", then the scientific process should be available to settle arguments. But it seems to fail. Some suggest that instead it is "engineering", not "science". But engineering is nothing more than applied science. For example, in engineering, bridge designs are tested against reality in the longer run. Even in the short run, bridge models can be tested in environments that simulate reality. Simulations are a short-cut to reality, but still bound to reality if we want them to be useful. If a bridge eventually fails, and the failure is not a construction or materials flaw, then what is left is the engineering of the bridge to blame. An engineer's model must be tightly bound to the laws of physics and chemistry. The engineer is married to the laws whether he/she wants to be or not.

But we don't have this in software designs for the most part. We have the requirements, such as what the input and output looks like and the run-time constraints which dictate the maximum time a given operation is allowed to take. But there is much in-between these that is elusive to objective metrics.

…

So, if physical engineering is really science ("applied science" to be more exact), but software design does not follow the same pattern, then what is software design? Perhaps it is math. Math is not inherently bound to the physical world. Some do contentiously argue that it is bound because it may not necessarily be valid in hypothetical or real alternative universe(s) that have rules stranger than we can envision, but for practical purposes we can generally consider it independent of the known laws of physics, nature, biology, etc.

I thought it was common knowledge that computer science is a branch of mathematics. As a computer science major this wasn't really controversial. Although a find that definition of engineering lacking. Engineers build things and study how best to build things, software engineering fits this mold pretty centrally.

Math is where the inverse of "the" logarithm function is eˣ, computer science is where it's 2ˣ, engineering and science are where it's 10ˣ.

More seriously, your definition of engineering is way better than theirs. Half of engineering is figuring out where it is and isn't safe to not bound your model to the laws of physics and chemistry too tightly. E.g. atoms are a pretty big deal, but if your elasticity model is atomistic and you're building something that's not nanometer-scale then you're doing it wrong.

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