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Very much depends on what kind of science we're thinking about. Sociology and psychology have become much more interesting now that we've ditched the obnoxious

Very much depends on what kind of science we're thinking about. Sociology and psychology have become much more interesting now that we've ditched the obnoxious tradition of trying to subsume every finding under a theory of everything that ends up explaining nothing – think of Talcott Parsons. The same probably goes for computer science: an interesting algorithm is an interesting algorithm, it doesn't need any sort of wider philosophy to justify itself. And biology. And so on. Often, facts are valuable in and of themselves. It's surprising how little we still know about the world.

raxxorrax 7y ago
But isn't it a problem that you just generate trivial observations without being able to form conclusions? That you missing the perspective that makes the gathered data valuable? Historically computer science was often bundled with philosophy, because the field of CS wasn't taken seriously enough to warrant a standalone field of study. Philosophy was probably a popular choice due to the overlap in reasoning and principles, which were emphasized by classical philosophers. Being able to reason about the properties and especially correctness of algorithms sounds useful. Don't worry, I skip that part in my daily work often enough.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  It's not a problem to publish novel observations without being able to plug it into a theory right away. Sometimes, novel observations are important enough on their own without being able to generate conclusions right off the bat. Penicillin, in particular, was published based on the observation of inhibition of bacterial growth in a petri dish which had some fungus in it. It took later scientists to isolate the chemical agent which caused this antibiotic effect and form a theory about it. In fact, a paper on an observation is probably more important by itself than an observation plus some mediocre theory. The theory paper can come later.

raxxorrax 7y ago

But isn't it a problem that you just generate trivial observations without being able to form conclusions? That you missing the perspective that makes the gathered data valuable? Historically computer science was often bundled with philosophy, because the field of CS wasn't taken seriously enough to warrant a standalone field of study. Philosophy was probably a popular choice due to the overlap in reasoning and principles, which were emphasized by classical philosophers. Being able to reason about the properties and especially correctness of algorithms sounds useful. Don't worry, I skip that part in my daily work often enough.

Robotbeat 7y ago
It's not a problem to publish novel observations without being able to plug it into a theory right away. Sometimes, novel observations are important enough on their own without being able to generate conclusions right off the bat. Penicillin, in particular, was published based on the observation of inhibition of bacterial growth in a petri dish which had some fungus in it. It took later scientists to isolate the chemical agent which caused this antibiotic effect and form a theory about it. In fact, a paper on an observation is probably more important by itself than an observation plus some mediocre theory. The theory paper can come later.