> Science is description and explanation on top of empiricism. It is the first means by which people understand things, not the last, as formal methods came way

> Science is description and explanation on top of empiricism. It is the first means by which people understand things, not the last, as formal methods came way late. I don't think that's at odds with what the parent comment said; the reason we use empiricism and description for analyzing reality is because we didn't create it and we don't know the rules beforehand. When designing a software system, you _choose_ the rules of which things interact and which things don't, and how those interactions occur; there's no need for empiricism in order to discover these interactions. We don't necessarily need to use science to understand our software systems because we rule over them by fiat and can choose to design them in ways that make it easier for us to understand them.