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V_V comments on Would you notice if science died? - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Douglas_Knight 08 March 2016 04:04AM

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Comment author: V_V 08 March 2016 05:35:52PM 0 points [-]

Would you label the LHC "science" or "engineering"?

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 March 2016 05:39:13PM *  2 points [-]

I think the science/engineering-distinction used by Douglas Knight and Lumifer provides no good model, so you have to ask them.

Comment author: pianoforte611 09 March 2016 03:04:25AM *  1 point [-]

It's both. I think the distinction can be reasonably clean - science aims at understanding via explicitly modeling the process (not necessarily mathematically but often) and then testing the model. The process of building the LHC was engineering, the experiments themselves are part of science.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 08 March 2016 08:46:27PM 1 point [-]

The LHC is multiple things

  • a set of theoretical results describing what might happen under what physical circumstances
  • an application of said theory to a certain realizable sub-set of technological reality and the prediction of what happens then
  • an engineering effort to build a complex experimental apparatus

(and also a social process driving the people to do all this)

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