From: utzoo!henry Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Re: Social Scientists as Pinkos Article-I.D.: utzoo.2185 Posted: Wed Jun 16 17:40:52 1982 Received: Wed Jun 16 17:40:52 1982 I think the whole issue of whether "science" appears in the name is a red herring, a matter of arbitrary nomenclature rather than deep meaning. (Although I still get a giggle out of the application to the various social "sciences", most of which are not true sciences although some are making progress towards that status.) We name it "science" basically if we can't think of a better word for it. Not that I think Computer Science is a real science, mind you; I hold to the "engineering" theory myself. It is misleading to cite things like automata theory as counterexamples, because these are really branches of mathematics, having little or nothing to do with real computers. Sure, their abstractions sometimes resemble real computers, and their results are sometimes useful when dealing with real computers, but the same can be said about relationships between any number of subfields of mathematics and science/engineering. (Proof: both automata theory and complexity theory got started long before real computers, and the arrival of real computers had little effect on their mainstreams.)