# What exactly is computer science?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-computer-science/328612>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 30, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-computer-science/328612 "2005-10-30T19:19:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-computer-science/328612/21 "2005-11-03T06:40:36Z")

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> [@ultrafilter](#):
>
> While evidence may be interesting, what we are concerned with is the provability of a statement. Remember we’re working in a domain here where there’s no distinction between truth and necessary truth. That’s not the case for sciences.

You and **dwalin** have made it clear to me that I was linguistically careless in my response to you.

To return to my original point: By “testable question”, I mean: a potentially disprovable conjecture, which I hope you will agree, is the very soul of science as practiced today.

Within a mathematical system, the testable question for a statement about number theory, for example, would be whether or not it could be derived from given postulates.

For this reason I group math in with the sciences. You’d have a long way to go to convince me otherwise, and such a discussion would be such a hijack that I would hope you’d take it to another thread.

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