Mathematics is the
lingua franca of science. Except that
Bernard Chazelle now
claims that there are two such languages - mathematics and computer science. It's a curious claim. He likens mathematics to "epithets" and computer science to "novels" and claims that a computer science background is imperative to studying biology. All he thinks we need are a great populariser of computer science (wasn't that what Wolfram tried to be?) and an Einstein.
I'm inclined to ask, with the article's author, "Isn't computer science really just a stepchild of mathematics?"
In the same way that modern mathematics is dependent on modern physics?
ReplyDeleteI have no background in CS, so can't actually comment on the claim. Although one math friend of mine is now probably moving to Google to do bioinformatics --- these things do intersect in important ways, and I would not be surprised if different areas of science use different languages.