blog: Computer science - a science?
Ubiquity has an interesting interview with Peter J. Denning, currently Chairman of the Computer Science Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Denning discusses why he believes it is important for Computer Science to be a science and how one could justify that claim.
(1) It's important for collaboration because it establishes credibility with the natural science fields with which we work closely. (2) It's important for innovation because someone who can see what principles govern a problem can look for possible solutions among the technologies that conform to those principles. (3) It's important for the vitality of our field because it helps us clarify the big questions that occupy us. Today's big questions overlap fields, such as biology's question, "What is the information process by which the organism translates DNA to new living cells? Can we influence or manipulate that process to heal disease?" (4) It's important for the advancement of science because natural information processes and natural computations are being discovered as part of the deep structures of many fields; we need a common language to discuss these phenomena. The Great Principles of Computing framework is such a language.
