From: utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!smb
Newsgroups: net.misc
Title: Re: Social Scientists as Pinkos
Article-I.D.: unc.3549
Posted: Tue Jun 15 18:31:54 1982
Received: Thu Jun 17 03:56:30 1982


Fred Brooks has made a useful distinction between 'science' and 'engineering':

	A scientist builds in order to study; an engineer studies in
	order to build.

What is the ultimate goal of what we do?  Eventually -- and it may be
several layers removed -- the aim of computer science is to aid someone
in producing answers to some problem outside the field.  Whether we do
that by writing better editors, or by designing more efficient sorting
algorithms, or by devising programming languages that make it easier to
write correct programs isn't important; what is important is that the
goal *of the field* is not knowledge itself, but to produce tools useful
for others.  (Please note that I'm not saying that the results of "science"
can't or shouldn't be used to build better mousetraps; obviously, that's
nonsense.  Nor am I saying anything about the motivations of any individual
researchers;  just as there are applied physicists, there are theoreticians
in computer science.  I'm speaking of the intent of the field as a whole.)


		--Steve Bellovin