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I think there must be more pillars than that. Biology and chemistry while related to physics are distinct (in the same way physics is not maths). More broadly,

I think there must be more pillars than that. Biology and chemistry while related to physics are distinct (in the same way physics is not maths). More broadly, humanities and the arts are still valid areas of knowledge. Hacker news has a bias towards your three pillars, but I think it is important to acknowledge that human knowledge does go beyond CS, maths and physics.

naasking 8y ago
I disagree re: biology and chemistry. Certainly they are epistemically useful simplifications of the other pillars, but they are not foundational or fundamental. Physics is not math because it's an empirical rather than a priori exploration. We are trying to reproduce the function governing natural laws, where in mathematics we are exploring the properties of functions. Computer science in turn is concerned with the construction of mathematical structures via algorithms, and so physics will be one such construction. I think trying to place humanities and the arts under "knowledge" is a category error. These fields don't produce knowledge as its commonly understood, as a corpus of mind-independent facts and their relationships. Certainly facts appear in these fields, such as historical facts and authorship, but I don't think building a corpus of facts is not the main purpose.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  > simplifications of the other pillars This fallacy is called "reductionism."
  - wnoise 8y ago
    It's not universally accepted that it is fallacy. And for whatever it misses, reductionism is a hell of a tool that has been incredibly useful in understanding the world. Of course, so are chemistry and biology, so blithely dismissed in the parent comment.
    - naasking 8y ago
      > Of course, so are chemistry and biology, so blithely dismissed in the parent comment. I didn't dismiss them at all, I explicitly said they are epistemically useful, but that doesn't entail we should accept them into our core ontology.
  - naasking 8y ago
    It's a philosophy not a fallacy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/

naasking 8y ago

I disagree re: biology and chemistry. Certainly they are epistemically useful simplifications of the other pillars, but they are not foundational or fundamental. Physics is not math because it's an empirical rather than a priori exploration. We are trying to reproduce the function governing natural laws, where in mathematics we are exploring the properties of functions. Computer science in turn is concerned with the construction of mathematical structures via algorithms, and so physics will be one such construction. I think trying to place humanities and the arts under "knowledge" is a category error. These fields don't produce knowledge as its commonly understood, as a corpus of mind-independent facts and their relationships. Certainly facts appear in these fields, such as historical facts and authorship, but I don't think building a corpus of facts is not the main purpose.

Koshkin 8y ago
> simplifications of the other pillars This fallacy is called "reductionism."
- wnoise 8y ago
  It's not universally accepted that it is fallacy. And for whatever it misses, reductionism is a hell of a tool that has been incredibly useful in understanding the world. Of course, so are chemistry and biology, so blithely dismissed in the parent comment.
  - naasking 8y ago
    > Of course, so are chemistry and biology, so blithely dismissed in the parent comment. I didn't dismiss them at all, I explicitly said they are epistemically useful, but that doesn't entail we should accept them into our core ontology.
- naasking 8y ago
  It's a philosophy not a fallacy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/