“Computer science is an empirical discipline. […] Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing the machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available. Each new program that is built is an experiment. It poses a question to nature, and its behavior offers clues to an answer.”

—  Allen Newell

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 114.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Computer science is an empirical discipline. […] Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing…" by Allen Newell?
Allen Newell photo
Allen Newell 7
American cognitive scientist 1927–1992

Related quotes

Max Planck photo

“An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Source: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1949)
Context: Experimenters are the schocktroops of science… An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer. But before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned – the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted – Nature’s answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of theorists, who find himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics.

Isaac Asimov photo

“It is the nature of science that answers automatically pose new and more subtle questions.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

The Wellsprings of Life (1960), p. 141
General sources

Max Planck photo

“Experimenters are the shocktroops of science… An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer. But before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned – the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted – Nature’s answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of theorists, who find himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1949)

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore

Alan Turing photo

“If one wants to make a machine mimic the behaviour of the human computer in some complex operation one has to ask him how it is done, and then translate the answer into the form of an instruction table. Constructing instruction tables is usually described as "programming."”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)

Yukihiro Matsumoto photo

“Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. They think, "By doing this, the machine will run faster. By doing this, the machine will run more effectively. By doing this, the machine will something something something." They are focusing on machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines. We are the masters. They are the slaves.”

Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) Japanese computer scientist

Yukihiro Matsumoto " The Philosophy of Ruby, A Conversation with Yukihiro Matsumoto, Part I http://www.artima.com/intv/ruby4.html" by Bill Venners on 2003-09-29 (Artima Developer).

“After the new forms are introduced into the language, it is possible to formulate with their help internal questions and possible answers to them. A question of this kind may be either empirical or logical; accordingly a true answer is either factually true or analytic.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology (1950), Ch. 3. What does acceptance of a kind of entities mean?

“The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask.”

James Cameron (journalist) (1911–1985) British journalist

Cameron Country, broadcast on BBC TV, July 12, 1969.

Yevgeny Zamyatin photo

“Dealing with answered questions is the privilege of brains constructed like a cow's stomach, which, as we know, is built to digest cud.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
The same is true of what we write: it walks and it talks, but it can be dead-alive or alive-alive. What is truly alive stops before nothing and ceaselessly seeks answers to absurd, "childish" questions. Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken — errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs. And if answers be impossible of attainment, all the better! Dealing with answered questions is the privilege of brains constructed like a cow's stomach, which, as we know, is built to digest cud.

Michael Atiyah photo

“Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: `I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvellous machine.”

Michael Atiyah (1929–2019) British mathematician

[Michael Atiyah, Collected works. Vol. 6, The Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, Oxford Science Publications, http://www.math.tamu.edu/~rojas/atiyah20thcentury.pdf, 978-0-19-853099-2, 2160826, 2004]

Related topics