Re: D1. Separate computer science ontology from philosophical ontology
Avril,
I would be happy to include under science everything that is
included under the term Wissenschaft in German -- i.e., both
the natural sciences and the social sciences.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean. There is the total science TS that
> includes philosophy (also philosophical ontology PO), theology, sociology,
> electrical engineering, particle physics, and all that can be called
> science. But TS does not include, only for the sake of the case at hand,
> those things that we call computer ontology CO, that includes things such as
> ontology engineering tools, langueges like RDF, RDFS, OWL and others, and
> the individual ontologies created with the languages.
>
> And now we should ask how CO and TS are related?
Following is what I consider the fundamental distinction:
1. Science (in the broadest sense) is the open-ended search
for knowledge without any concern for its applications
or the amount of time and resources required for the
search. For example, scientists may take centuries
to solve a single problem such as Fermat's last theorem,
which has no known practical applications in itself.
2. Engineering is the application of science to the solution
of practical problems within the limits of available
resources (such as budgets, deadlines, personnel, etc.).
In that sense, no branch of engineering is a science, but every
branch of engineering may contribute to science by testing
scientific theories and by contributing new ideas that may
stimulate the further development of science.
I would consider almost all of computer science to be a branch
of engineering rather than pure science. And electrical
engineering is also a branch of engineering rather than science,
even though it has contributed many new ideas to science.
And by the way, I do not consider the word 'pure' to be an
honorific that implies a higher value. The distinction between
science and engineering is independent of any value system.
In fact, much of the science that is pursued for its own sake
without any concern for application is much less interesting than
those branches that have an enormous amount of practical use.
John