I don't think that's an entirely fair comparison. You can design algorithms and prove things about them without hardware, and the algorithms and their propertie

I don't think that's an entirely fair comparison. You can design algorithms and prove things about them without hardware, and the algorithms and their properties will be valid in and of themselves. You don't get to "swim", but the algorithms will be there. One could argue that "computer science" is the study of the logical processes involved in computation.