Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
There were attempts in this period to defi ne computer science in terms
of computer technology. In a letter to the editors of
Science
in 1967, the
noted computer scientists Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, and Alan Perlis
maintained that the answer to the perennial question of “Is there such a
thing as computer science, and if there is, what is it?” was really quite
simple: just as biology was the study of life, and astronomy the study of
stars, computer science was the study of computers. That the former
were natural phenomenon and the latter was artifi cial was irrelevant (an
argument that the Nobel Prize-winning Simon would make more thor-
oughly in 1967 in his
The Sciences of the Artifi cial
).
49
Yes, computers
involved technology as well as science. Yes, computing represented a
dirty mix of mathematics, electronics, psychology, and many other already-
established disciplines. But computers produced interesting, novel, and
complex phenomenon, and that was justifi cation enough for a science of
computing.
For most aspiring computer scientists, however, this was not a satis-
factory defi nition. It smacked too much of the physicality of engineering.
“Computer science is no more about the computer than astronomy is
about telescopes,” Edsger Dijkstra famously declared.
50
“We were
blinded by the huge success of computers as practical tools,” Louis Fein
argued, and therefore “overemphasized the importance of computer
design and programming.”
51
A fi rst-rate program in the computer sci-
ences “should be possible without any computing equipment at all, just
as a fi rst-rate program in certain areas of physics can exist without a
cyclotron.”
52
It was a “widespread misconception” that computer science
was “simply concerned with the design of computing devices,” echoed
a report by the ACM Curriculum Committee in 1965.
53
Even the choice
to include machinery in the title of their association seemed increasingly
improvident to many ACM members. Over the course of the next several
decades, regular attempts would be made to change the name of the
ACM to something more science oriented.
54
For a growing number of computer scientists, the computer itself was
increasingly just an abstraction, a “universal machine” that could be
transformed into whatever particular solution happened to be required.
It was the process of transformation, and its possibilities and constraints,
that was of central theoretical importance; the physical characteristics of
the underlying object of that transformation were immaterial.
The fi rst important step toward the establishment of a science of
computing independent of the computer had originated with John von
