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I wonder why there exists "computer science" but not "finance science" or "air conditioning science" or "automotive science". It makes me doubt that computer sc

I wonder why there exists "computer science" but not "finance science" or "air conditioning science" or "automotive science". It makes me doubt that computer science is really a thing. Algorithms, logic, computation, electronics are covered by other more fundamental "sciences" such as mathematics, statistics, physics, etc. Is computation really justified as a scientific discipline of its own?

sotojuan 11y ago
https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?t=28 https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?t=28
ngorski 11y ago
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
"Finance science" would probably be economics. HVAC and automotive engineering are intermediary disciplines that involve facets from various science and engineering fields. That the software industry is anti-scientific does not mean there is not a computer science.
tensor 11y ago
Many in the field consider it more math than engineering. It's arguably not a science though, we don't make hypotheses and don't do experiments.
- executesorder66 11y ago
  I don't make many hypotheses, but I do a shit load of experiments.
- Shish2k 11y ago
  > we don't make hypotheses and don't do experiments. I don't formally write them down (unless it's a particularly complex case), but during debugging and performance tweaking I find myself making hypotheses and experiments all the time (according to the lay definitions of those words, at least)
tikhonj 11y ago
Meh. "Automotive science" was cleverly branded as "mechanical engineering". "Financial science" is "financial engineering" or if you're less keen on making money, "economics". Besides, the exact fields and their delineations are largely arbitrary. They're just historical artifacts. Why is there a line between math and statistics? Where did "applied math" as a separate field come from? We could just go all European and call CS "informatics". After all, that's probably the best description of the field: it's the study of information. If not for historical and social reasons, I'd say that CS was a superset of math, not the other way around. "Computer" is just the name we give to the whole class of physical tools we use to study information.
- g_delgado14 11y ago
  > or if you're less keen on making money, "economics". Economics is about modelling behaviour (be it macro or micro), it has nothing to do with making money.
- eastWestMath 11y ago
  > I'd say that CS was a superset of math, not the other way around. "Computer" is just the name we give to the whole class of physical tools we use to study information. Then you'd be ignoring that a whole mess of math is not, in fact, computable (axiom of choice, law of excluded middle, etc). I think the problem is way too many "computer scientists" are pretty much software engineers.
  - tikhonj 11y ago
    I am not ignoring any of that. Nothing says that you can't work with non-constructive logic in a programming language, or analyze non-constructive logics as programming languages. In fact that can be extremely useful although it's also, at present, difficult and not super common. The things you listed are extremely close to one of the foundational fields of CS, namely programming language theory. It's funny that you should bring up the law of the excluded middle because I learned a lot about it by studying PL theory: did you know that adding callCC to your typed lambda calculus turns it from a constructive logic system to a classical one? And that double negation translation is just a CPS transform which, at least for me, is a heck of a lot easier to reason about than proof theory directly? Everything in math is, at least in theory, provable. Provable in a discrete system (ie a formal logic) even if it's reasoning about something that isn't discrete. So there's nothing fundamental stopping us from doing exactly the same proofs in a formal system that a computer can understand. Oh, say, a programming language. Of course, with current technology, it's difficult from a practical standpoint, but there's nothing fundamental stopping us. And ideally it's something we should do to ward off errors and also to create proof artifacts that can be analyzed and manipulated systematically. Wouldn't static analysis for mathematical proofs be great? Or papers written as libraries so that relying on a lemma literally links against the proof it was first defined in. Seriously, if you dive into PL theory you'll see that the line separating CS from math doesn't really exist except as a social and technological phenomenon. (Lots of things are fundamentally possible but too difficult to do in reality, at least right now.)
GauntletWizard 11y ago
Computer Science is one of the purest of maths; It is where much of set theory, graph theory and basically all of algorithmics belongs. That Software Engineering and Information Technology are so often lumped into it (or taught instead of it) is a failure of schools and a historical artifact.

sotojuan 11y ago

https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?t=28 https://youtu.be/2Op3QLzMgSY?t=28

ngorski 11y ago

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~choset/whatiscs.html

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

"Finance science" would probably be economics. HVAC and automotive engineering are intermediary disciplines that involve facets from various science and engineering fields. That the software industry is anti-scientific does not mean there is not a computer science.

tensor 11y ago

Many in the field consider it more math than engineering. It's arguably not a science though, we don't make hypotheses and don't do experiments.

executesorder66 11y ago
I don't make many hypotheses, but I do a shit load of experiments.
Shish2k 11y ago
> we don't make hypotheses and don't do experiments. I don't formally write them down (unless it's a particularly complex case), but during debugging and performance tweaking I find myself making hypotheses and experiments all the time (according to the lay definitions of those words, at least)

tikhonj 11y ago

Meh. "Automotive science" was cleverly branded as "mechanical engineering". "Financial science" is "financial engineering" or if you're less keen on making money, "economics". Besides, the exact fields and their delineations are largely arbitrary. They're just historical artifacts. Why is there a line between math and statistics? Where did "applied math" as a separate field come from? We could just go all European and call CS "informatics". After all, that's probably the best description of the field: it's the study of information. If not for historical and social reasons, I'd say that CS was a superset of math, not the other way around. "Computer" is just the name we give to the whole class of physical tools we use to study information.

g_delgado14 11y ago
> or if you're less keen on making money, "economics". Economics is about modelling behaviour (be it macro or micro), it has nothing to do with making money.
eastWestMath 11y ago
> I'd say that CS was a superset of math, not the other way around. "Computer" is just the name we give to the whole class of physical tools we use to study information. Then you'd be ignoring that a whole mess of math is not, in fact, computable (axiom of choice, law of excluded middle, etc). I think the problem is way too many "computer scientists" are pretty much software engineers.
- tikhonj 11y ago
  I am not ignoring any of that. Nothing says that you can't work with non-constructive logic in a programming language, or analyze non-constructive logics as programming languages. In fact that can be extremely useful although it's also, at present, difficult and not super common. The things you listed are extremely close to one of the foundational fields of CS, namely programming language theory. It's funny that you should bring up the law of the excluded middle because I learned a lot about it by studying PL theory: did you know that adding callCC to your typed lambda calculus turns it from a constructive logic system to a classical one? And that double negation translation is just a CPS transform which, at least for me, is a heck of a lot easier to reason about than proof theory directly? Everything in math is, at least in theory, provable. Provable in a discrete system (ie a formal logic) even if it's reasoning about something that isn't discrete. So there's nothing fundamental stopping us from doing exactly the same proofs in a formal system that a computer can understand. Oh, say, a programming language. Of course, with current technology, it's difficult from a practical standpoint, but there's nothing fundamental stopping us. And ideally it's something we should do to ward off errors and also to create proof artifacts that can be analyzed and manipulated systematically. Wouldn't static analysis for mathematical proofs be great? Or papers written as libraries so that relying on a lemma literally links against the proof it was first defined in. Seriously, if you dive into PL theory you'll see that the line separating CS from math doesn't really exist except as a social and technological phenomenon. (Lots of things are fundamentally possible but too difficult to do in reality, at least right now.)

GauntletWizard 11y ago

Computer Science is one of the purest of maths; It is where much of set theory, graph theory and basically all of algorithmics belongs. That Software Engineering and Information Technology are so often lumped into it (or taught instead of it) is a failure of schools and a historical artifact.