From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!bj Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: Dr. D., math, etc. Article-I.D.: yale-com.505 Posted: Thu May 13 00:46:19 1982 Received: Thu May 13 03:49:06 1982 Expires: Thu May 20 00:46:19 1982 If programming were a science, there would be only one way to program something, and the methods would produce repeatable results every time. Clearly this is nonesense. Clearly this is nonsense. A problem in science does not always have one solution. If an engineer wants to build a bridge, there is no fixed type of bridge that should be used in a particular location, it is decided by the whim of some person or current trends. If a mathematician wants to prove a theorem he can often choose between several proof methods, break the proof in lemmas in several ways, order the pieces in several ways, and decide what to use as a basis and how to use them (there are scores of different proofs for the Pythagorean theorem, none of thwrong). Science does not limit you to one way to solve a problem, it is a method which tries to limit you to the set of correct solutions. B.J. (Herbison@yale) (decvax!yale-comix!herbison)