27 AUG 2012 by ideonexus

 Three Classes of Natural Philosopher

THOSE who have treated of natural pilosophy, may be nearly reduced to three classes. Of these some have been attributed to the several species of things, specific and occult qualities; on which, in a manner unknown, they make the operations of the several bodies to depend. The sum of the doctrine of the Schools derived from Aristotle and the Peripatetics is herein contained. They affirm that the several effects of the bodies arise from the particular natures of those bodies ariſe from the pa...
Folksonomies: philosophy hypothesis
Folksonomies: philosophy hypothesis
  1  notes

Those who name things, but give them no meaning, those who extrapolate big ideas from observed phenomena, but ideas subject to fancy, and those content to describe the simple basic principles and leave it at that.

11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus

 At Best Science Can Only Model

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work—that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area.
Folksonomies: reality modeling
Folksonomies: reality modeling
  1  notes

And work on improving those models.

21 APR 2011 by ideonexus

 L Peter Deutsch: Computer Science is Not Science

I have a little bit of a rant about computer science also. I could make a pretty strong case that the word science should not be applied to computing. I think essentially all of what's called computer science is some combination of engineering and applied mathematics. I think very little of it is science in terms oft of the scientific process, is, where what you're doing is developing better descriptions of observed phenomena.
Folksonomies: computer science
Folksonomies: computer science
 1  1  notes

It is applied mathematics and engineering.