Science and Art
John Stuart Mill (1843):
"Several sciences are often necessary to form the groundwork
of a single art. Such is the complication of human affairs,
that to enable one thing to be done, it is often requisite to
know the nature and properties of many things ....
Art in general consists of the truths of Science, arranged in
the most convenient order for practice, instead of the
order which is the most convenient for thought. Science
groups and arranges its truths so as to enable us to
take in at one view as much as possible of the general order
of the universe.
Art ... brings together from parts of the field of
science most remote from one another, the truths relating to
the production of the different and heterogeneous conditions
necessary to each effect which the exigencies of practical
life require. "
(My emphases)
Taxonomies and Typologies
The challenge in here is one with which one of my recent PhD
graduates (Angela) wrestled, in acknowledging that a true
understanding of student programming difficulties required a
'typology' of attributes that define such difficulties.
Knowing the nature and properties of the discipline in
question is the first step to creating the intellectual rigour
that goes to make up a science.
In other words, science consists of taxonomies.
Form and Content in Computer Science (Minsky, 1969)
- Theory of Computation (form is often beguiling: what is
the optimum way to multiply two numbers?)
- Programming Languages (Look at moi, look at moi: I've got
one word to say to you: syntax!)
- Learning, Teaching, and the "New Mathematics" (which has
more x's?)
Education is another area in which the computer scientist has
confused form and content, but this time the confusion
concerns his professional role. He perceives his principal
function to provide programs and machines for use in old and
new educational schemes. Well and good, but I believe he has a
more complex responsibility -- to work out and communicate
models of the process of education itself.
Computing Education has a long (and distinguished) history!
Computer Programming as an Art (Knuth, 1972)
Donald Knuth, in his 1973 Turing Award Lecture, wrote:
If we go back to Latin roots, we find ars, artis meaning
"skill." It is perhaps significant that the corresponding
Greek word was Τεχνη
(tau-epsilon-chi-nu-eta), the root of both "technology" and
"technique."
The word "science" seems to have been used for many years
in about the same sense as "art"; for example, people spoke
also of the seven liberal sciences, which were the same as
the seven liberal arts. Duns Scotus in the thirteenth
century called logic "the Science of Sciences, and the Art
of Arts". As civilization and learning developed, the words
took on more and more independent meanings, "science" being
used to stand for knowledge, and "art" for the
application of knowledge. Thus, the science of
astronomy was the basis
for the art of navigation. The situation was almost exactly
like the way in which we now distinguish between "science"
and "engineering."
(My emphases)
Knuth, by his own admission, regards The Art of Programming
as his life's major work. It is still being written (vol 4 of 6).
Portability: Why be Limiting?
Many of you will know where I am coming from here:
My Microsoft Page
But I'm not anti-Microsoft, just pro-interoperability!
- Wikipedia: Portability is one of several quality
metrics one can define on software.
- Portability of software as a quality metric was recognized
in the late 60's. Bill Waite (while at Basser Computing,
Sydney) developed a language independent macro
processor and argued for cross-language
independence.
- An application is portable across a class of
environments to the degree that the effort required to
transport and adapt it to a new environment in the class is
less than the effort of redevelopment.
- Documents are (like) software
- One key new emergent technology is microformats:
extracting structure from embedded data (UIMA project?)
- Non-portability limits the capacity of the learning object
to reach its intended audience.
