The name Computer Science itself is a marketing ploy to convince people that it is a real science (and not just another branch of engineering). Seems to be working for CS, and I can easily imagine people on this forum would be happy to defend the legitimacy of the Swedish Institute of Sciences Nobel Memorial Prize in Computational Science.
I think the issue is not an objection to marketing but an objection to the inherently political nature of economics. The people who don't like the phrase Noble Prize in Economics generally don't agree with the political aspirations of neoliberal economists to shape and control global policy. There is something very troubling about the amount of power that central bankers and academics wield given how flimsy their methods are.
Historically Computer Science was often more associated with mathematics in academia than it was with electrical engineering--depending upon the school. Today, most people would probably agree that it's mostly an engineering discipline, albeit perhaps lacking some of the formal methods and practices that other branches of engineering tend to have. But it was presumably less clear when the term was coined in the early 1960s.
> albeit perhaps lacking some of the formal methods and practices that other branches of engineering tend to have.
I'd like to point out that this depends heavily on your institution. My CS program had a class literally called "Formal methods", and every student was required to learn formal proofs before their first programming-heavy class (namely, "Data Structures I").
> I'd like to point out that this depends heavily on your institution. My CS program had a class literally called "Formal methods", and every student was required to learn formal proofs before their first programming-heavy class (namely, "Data Structures I").
But compare usage of formal methods and practices in software engineers in a startup (or even well-established company) with engineers designing a bridge, for example.
Much of theoretical computer science is math, like much of modern theoretical physics is also math. “Computational science” brings up images of computational complexity theory, computability, information theory, distributed consensus, type theory etc.
> Much of theoretical computer science is math, like much of modern theoretical physics is also math.
Math is not science - regardless of whether it’s masquerading as computer science or certain branches of theoretical physics.
This makes me sound down on mathematics which I’m certainly not. It’s both useful and can be profoundly beautiful. And it can be an integral tool in science — or studied on its own merits. But it’s not science.
Isn't CS proper (not software engineering) much more a field of math?
> I think the issue is not an objection to marketing but an objection to the inherently political nature of economics. The people who don't like the phrase Noble Prize in Economics generally don't agree with the political aspirations of neoliberal economists to shape and control global policy. There is something very troubling about the amount of power that central bankers and academics wield given how flimsy their methods are.
Hmm, good point, I wonder if it's that or just good old internet "ackhuallyyy".
I think the issue is not an objection to marketing but an objection to the inherently political nature of economics. The people who don't like the phrase Noble Prize in Economics generally don't agree with the political aspirations of neoliberal economists to shape and control global policy. There is something very troubling about the amount of power that central bankers and academics wield given how flimsy their methods are.