From: Chris Gehlker Date: 2002-05-14T13:10:21+09:00 Subject: Re: OT:is software eng an art? On 5/13/02 1:08 PM, "Hal E. Fulton" wrote: > For that matter (much as it pains me to admit it), "computer > science" is not a science... it's a branch of engineering. (I > hate to admit it because I started out in physics, the purest > science of all, and we always thought that engineers were a > bunch of dimwitted hacks who wanted to memorize formulae > instead of understanding principles). > > And let's not even discuss the many shades of pseudoscience > such as psychology, sociology, library science, parapsychology, > economics, and voodoo. I'm always interested when I read something like this because the scale seems so arbitrary. I admit to having a very pedestrian notion of science, that it's about generating falsifiable hypotheses and then actually testing them with repeatable experiments. I'll go farther and assert that if best if the hypothesis are embodied in a quantitative model if only because such models tend to be very easy to validate/falsify empirically. My problem is that Hal's hierarchy tends to fit this model at the ends - physics and library science/voodoo - but totally falls apart in the middle. Several philosophers of science have attempted to rank the sciences by the simple expedient of looking through journals in the field and measuring the percent of articles that follow the classic pattern of stating a hypothesis, describing the experiment that was conducted to test it, and stating whether the experiment falsified the hypothesis. The ranking seems pretty stable no matter what journals are chosen or who is doing the tallying. Physics wins, which probably surprises no one. Economics universally comes in second. Psychology comes in about the middle. Geology ranks down with Library Science and Computer Science. Astronomy comes in dead last (but then I don't think they found a journal for voodoo). Biology is a non-science in general but some sub fields, genetics and micro-biology, are as 'hard science' as physics. Other disciplines, like chemistry, have many subfields but they tend to all be very quantitative and empirical. In fairness to Hal, he didn't tell us where he puts astronomy, geology biology and chemistry so I'm just assuming that he follows the conventional pattern for physicists. -- Conversation, n. A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor. -Ambrose Bierce