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Comment by neonological | Hacker News Reader

It's technically not even a science. It's in the realm of logic and maths. After all we don't call algebra a science, why does computing all of sudden need the word?

So to some it all up: computer science is neither about computers nor is it a science.

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It's true that for some time now "science" has been used almost exclusively for disciplines that make use of experimental methodologies, but in earlier usage it just meant roughly "the process of creating knowledge." The German "Wissenschaft" (which is normally how "science" is translated) is closer to the older meaning (though I'm not fluent in German, so I'm just going off what I've been told).

But the inconsistency still exists regardless of the historical etymology.

Math is not a science. A mathematician is Not a scientist. Why is computing a science?

Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics are the three normative sciences. Mathematics falls comfortably within the domain of logic, and thus mathematics is a scientific enterprise. Computing science is the subset of the subset that deals with getting actual computable results.

Did you just group Logic and aesthetics together into one thing?

Beauty and ethics are subjective. Logic is not.

Either way following this definition of "normative science" neither logic nor computer science nor math goes under it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_science

The reason is because this definition mentions the notion of preferred outcome. Logic and Math and computer science do not deal with "preferred outcomes" these fields are all just axioms and the consequences resulting from said axioms preferred or not.

Pedantry aside, nobody considers a "mathematician" to be a "scientist" when using the terms as they are commonly used in English. This is a total inconsistency.

I’m using Peirce’s definition of the normative sciences[1]. As is not uncommon in English, the same words or phrases can denote different concepts and the wiki link you shared is a case in point.

[1] https://www.isko.org/cyclo/peirce

Feels arbitrary. You don't group oil painting with mechanical engineering why group Math with Beauty?

This isko organization... if they do indeed follow pierce is incredibly strange. Case in point: https://www.isko.org/cyclo/peirce1.jpg

Philosophy is under mathematics which is not under logic? Philosophy is like literature it is entirely a separate category and logic isn't even mentioned in his arbitrary grouping.

Well I'm not sure when the common usage of "science" changed, but it's possible that when "computer science" was coined in the 1950s [1], the older usage was still at least widely understood. Perhaps given the present day importance of the discipline that's stuck with an outdated name, we can return the the older usage which is IMO better.

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=computer+scien...

I'm curious how did mathematics miss out on the word "science." The meaning of the word "scientist" is consistent with how it's not ascribed to a mathematician as mathematicians don't do anything related to the scientific method.

The thing is you stated that around this time the term "science" was more broad and just meant acquiring knowledge... how come "science" wasn't applied to mathematicians? Technically, according to what you stated, the definition was broad enough to apply to mathematicians.

This reminds me of Holy Roman Empire, it's neither Holy nor Roman nor it's an Empire.

There's this old picture from a 1986 MIT lecture: https://miro.medium.com/max/4448/1*-yaqXNO1tUwVkUpyOqTT7Q@2x....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&t=15s

Good find. My post is voted down, but this authoritative source is literally saying the same exact thing.

Defining a thing by what it's not. Now that is a science unto itself.

I suppose if we call it computer science, then perhaps all the other forms of science should really be called "reverse engineering" (especially biology.)

Biology is consistent with science in the sense that there exists people called scientists in biology that do experiments utilizing the scientific method.

In math everything is purely theoretical conjecture. No hypothesizes, no testing, no observation, just derivations of theorems from axioms. Same with "Computer Science" it's all logic games.

That's why mathematicians are not known as scientists. For computing, I believe the term "computer science" was likely mistakenly coined by someone who didn't know the full extent of the word "science."

Modern math is more abstract.

Old math, like the one from primary school, was more inspired on physical phenomena and interactions with previous things.

We need more "clever guesses"(lets see what happens if A is B because C) and building up of theories in exercises. But that would not be rigourus...

> Same with "Computer Science" it's all logic games.

Unlike math, it's domain related applications though. What are databases, codecs, regexes or neural nets - abstractions or concrete tools for specific uses? It's not all platonic.

Domain related applications aren't what's studied by "Computer Scientists." You will note that most people who do "domain related" applications call them selves Software developers, Software engineers, etc. etc.

If someone finds themselves calling themselves "Computer scientist" they are indeed usually exclusively studying the logic game.

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