What are the core topics of Computer Science, and how are these topics studied? Those are the central questions of the Philosophy of Computer Science. However, how those questions are to be answered is a matter of ongoing debate and social construction. Guided by the questions answered by Shirley Gregor in her seminal work on theory in the field of Information Systems, this paper aims to understand how contemporary work on the philosophy of Computer Science answers these questions. In particular, we examine four recent books explicitly examining the topics and methodologies of Computer Science. While each of the books takes a different perspective and uses a different approach, all of them reach similar conclusions: Computer Science is firstly the study of computation, algorithms and their implementation and verification. In terms of the methods employed, the four books agree there are three separate traditions: a mathematical tradition, an engineering tradition and an empirical scientific tradition. The disciplinary boundaries of Computer Science are redrawn in each of the books, emphasizing mathematical, qualitative and empirical work over other forms of knowing. This paper also aims to ask the question what potential aspects of computer science that are currently undone. Which research methods are we not using due to the focus on mathematical, engineering or scientific reasoning? What research questions fall outside of the scope of current Computer Science? And are we as computer scientists influencing the world of computers and beyond enough?
The mathematical discourse on empirical equalities systematically uses the figure of equality in “abstract spaces” adapted to each case. Instead of these “ascents into ontology”, we prefer an enrichment of the formal language that can precisely convey the fact that some quantities are not visible, in a given context, because they are too large or too small. This notion of visibility in a context will be formally transcribed by a binary predicate of contextual visibility, which links a formal quantity x and a context of visibility c. A formal quantity is a rational number, which could be visible or not, depending on the context. The definition of contextual visibility will then be just a renaming of the binary predicate of relative standardity of RIST [Péraire 1992]. We validate this way the practices of physicists like P. A. M. Dirac [1927], or H. B. G. Casimir [1948] who have “defined” their empirical relations by applying them, which is not the mathematicians’s usual way of doing.
Our digital societies bear the hallmarks of non-convivial technologies as identified more than fifty years ago by Ivan Illich in his seminal book Tools for Conviviality (1973). In a context of ecosystemic and socio-economical crises, we argue in this paper that Illich’s ideas remain remarkably relevant, not only for understanding the negative effects of digital technologies but also as guidelines for embedding digital technologies in a degrowth scenario. As computer scientists, we therefore propose a research agenda for developing design for conviviality, a strongly normative value sensitive approach to the design of digital artefacts and systems. We discuss in particular two examples, digital infrastructures and business process management, which seem to be very much in need of a convivial rethinking.
This article investigates the undone science of software scalability. Software engineering literature focuses on the multiple ways that software can scale up, but too rarely on the possibilities, or necessities, of making it scale down. Drawing from geographical studies, we hypothesize that scales are constructed, rather than given, and argue that the design and use of specific computational artifacts—programming languages, data structures and protocols—are active participants in such material construction. Through a series of case studies, we discuss how computational artifacts can realize computing at both local and global scales.
The concept of “undone science” has emerged since the 2010s in the research in social sciences at the intersection of studies on social movements and science and technology studies. It refers to research questions that are neglected, ignored, or left unfunded, even though they deserve to be explored. The aim of this special issue is to apply this concept to computer science, by examining whether the way this discipline is structured (including its sociological, economic, and political dimensions), as well as the paradigms that shape it, make it possible to identify epistemological and ethical questions that are crucial for its development and conception.
