I meant natural in the sense of originating from nature, specifically as opposed to something built by people. The fact that digital computation is a synthetic construction of humans is what makes it “unnatural”, that it’s new is just a byproduct humans having invented it recently.
I’d agree there are ways that we can observe computation as a scientist and form hypotheses and perform experiments, especially if, for example, I write a program I don’t fully understand and don’t know how to predict the behavior of, or more maybe much more commonly when I observe software written by other people.
Thinking about the analogy to telescopes, the implication is that computers are an instrument for measuring something. Telescopes measure things about planets and stars, physical things that occur in nature. But what exactly do computers measure if they’re to be considered a measuring device? It’s fun to think of a computer being a physical device that measures pure logic; we can physically observe something that doesn’t occur in nature.
On the other hand, I’m hesitant to not draw some kind of line between CS and the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, because there seem to be real differences between them. (I was going to point out examples, but realized it’s fundamentally tricky to nail down and I’d be setting a trap for myself. ;)) Yes I agree the philosophy of where CS lands, and what CS really is, does land in the same ambiguous camp as mathematics (probably because CS and math both truly are in the same category of abstract logic, not directly tied to physical observations.) Maybe more useful and abstract tools are more difficult to categorize precisely because they are used as part of all the sciences and arts...
I’d agree there are ways that we can observe computation as a scientist and form hypotheses and perform experiments, especially if, for example, I write a program I don’t fully understand and don’t know how to predict the behavior of, or more maybe much more commonly when I observe software written by other people.
Thinking about the analogy to telescopes, the implication is that computers are an instrument for measuring something. Telescopes measure things about planets and stars, physical things that occur in nature. But what exactly do computers measure if they’re to be considered a measuring device? It’s fun to think of a computer being a physical device that measures pure logic; we can physically observe something that doesn’t occur in nature.
On the other hand, I’m hesitant to not draw some kind of line between CS and the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, because there seem to be real differences between them. (I was going to point out examples, but realized it’s fundamentally tricky to nail down and I’d be setting a trap for myself. ;)) Yes I agree the philosophy of where CS lands, and what CS really is, does land in the same ambiguous camp as mathematics (probably because CS and math both truly are in the same category of abstract logic, not directly tied to physical observations.) Maybe more useful and abstract tools are more difficult to categorize precisely because they are used as part of all the sciences and arts...