Well, it seems like a simpler concept than "science", anyway.
There’s a spectre that haunts Western pyshology which allows for the set of thus considered “scientific” checkboxes to be marked, which are sufficient for the physical sciences. But, physically speaking, the physical sciences are child’s play compared with the material subject of psychology, which is fairly undebatable. On the other hand, the same could be said for the physical sciences at certain points in time, and still to say in particular focuses. So what’s my point??
Psychology as it has so far been instituted in the western world cannot observe, define, or much less control the entropy it contends with. Critical theory, political theory, economics, poetics, cultural studies; truly the entire fields of humanities have a more comprehensive understanding of this entropy than the field of psychology does. Why? Because it cannot. It’s too much. Psychology can “scientific method” it’s heart out all it wants, but it remains to be seen that this method is even the best we’ve got. Mind you again that psychology cannot control for social entropy, and what but it can (debatable) falls off a cliff outside of the lab.
When we speak of social entropy, we cannot ignore politics; the scorpion’s tail of the entire effort which understandably ignores an effort to define either entropy or control but instead blindly accepts the human environment of contemporary ‘normal’ as the aim for dictating constants. This is of course ridiculous, and doing otherwise would be no less so. As such, it’s hard to blame the folks trying, but should be far easier to see how moot their effort is. The humanities has achieved a far more enlightened critique of the field of psychology than the field itself has even begun to. Sociology embraces the entropy whole-hearted and as such admits doubt and is politically marginalized (or privatized) accordingly. The approach of psychology in these respects is again understandable, but if the physical sciences were accused of something at all similar, we would all be up in arms.
On a separate note, the measurable issues with the institutional politics undermining western psychology are however similar to those at play in psysical sciences, but the vaguaries and innate necessity of ignorance in pursuing the task serve as multipliers to corruption. Where to even begin? It’s just too much.
To conclude, the effort in calling is certainly worthy and noble. But, the effort in practice is terribly fraught; deserves loads more criticism and caution than it receives. If the scientific method could be performed in scope (as one might say it is in the humanities) western psychogy remains in hypothetical stages. There’s cause for a few toasts, but not a celebration.
Computer science is not "directly traceable back to physics."
Assuming I'm not off-base there, I think the distinction is that unlike neuroscience, psychology often seeks to explain things by correlating data/observations rather than describing the underlying physiology.
The theoretical parts of computer science that do not get broken out academically into separate engineering disciplines (wherein physics is quite relevant) are really just branches of mathematics, without any physics involved.
> I think the distinction is that unlike neuroscience, psychology often seeks to explain things by correlating data/observations rather than describing the underlying physiology.
I don't know a huge amount about psychology but that sounds fair. Psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience all inform one another. I don't think it's quite accurate (or perhaps it's just needlessly pejorative) to suggest, as the OP does, that psychology has hit a "dead end" when the phenomenon under study requires the application of psychiatry or neuroscience in order to be more fully understood. On the contrary, it sounds like an indication that the psychologists might have discovered something interesting.
I totally agree. I'm not making any claims about the validity or worth of psychology, I just think the distinction OP was referring to is worth pointing out.
I think ideally we would understand everything from a physiological perspective, but until that time comes there are plenty of cases where we can benefit from acting on imperfect information. An imperfect example: I don't believe the mechanism that SSRI medicines work on is well understood, but for a lot of people they are obviously beneficial.
* The "mathematics" of computation (the British often call computer science informatics, and I think they might be closer). Information theory, computability theory, automata, etc. This would be the theory side of "computer science". But it is more it's own independent sort of mathematics.
* A science about what can be computed effectively, what works best, and other questions using empirical testing. This would be the "applied informatics", or the actual term "computer science". A computer has as much to do with computer science as telescopes do with astronomy, they are a supremely useful tool, and most scientists are probably pretty good at using them.
* Programming, this is the vocational skill, that anyone can learn, that is informed from what we know of the science.
* Software Engineering, this is the primary engineering discipline of the science. In the context of physics this would be like a civil engineer or something, or like a specialized electrical engineer (like compared to physics degree specialized in electromagnetism).
* IT/MIS, this is what most people think when you say computer scientist. But this is more like a specialized technician who maintains computers. And are like 3 degrees removed from the core of the informatics (informatics->science->engineering/programming->maintenance).
So in relation to the larger issue of the thread: In so far as mathematics came from physics (e.g. a tool to study nature, considering most strides in mathematics have come from people who could also loosely be described as physicists (like Newton and Plato, etc.) it's not a major stretch), computer science sort of came from mathematics, transitively it came from physics.
I really respect the effort here, but formal, productive mathematics predates anything we'd call physics (or the scientific method) to such a huge extent that I think this is a weak conclusion. But, on the other hand, it wouldn't have ever occurred to me to call Plato a physicist.
"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Dijkstra
"Computer science is not about machines, in the same way that astronomy is not about telescopes. There is an essential unity of mathematics and computer science." - Fellows
Sure in pure mathematics you can derive solutions using pure logic however if a model looks sound but an example shows up that disagrees with the model then there is obviously a flaw somewhere.
Similarly in physical sciences, experiments are data-points that constrain a model of the system. As physical sciences unfortunately don't have the luxury of using pure logic to derive models, they are stuck with using just these "tests".
As you said computer science is more or less a subset of mathematics. Because of this I would say that they are both true sciences, they just have a few extra tools at their disposal compared to the rest of the sciences.
You could try to say the same thing about psych being implemented by neurons, but it's not directly traceable. You can try building up from neural networks, and backtrack from Freud's drive/defense model, but there is an insurmountable gap in between.