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Lumifer comments on Would you notice if science died? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Would you labels Google's project of AlphaGo "science" or "engineering"?
Probably engineering -- it is mostly about creating a working "thing" and not about discovering new underlying principles. But the boundary between engineering and applied science can be very fuzzy and there are often feedback loops between the two.
AlphaGo is absolutely science (as well as engineering -- all experimental science involves some engineering). It involves fundamentally new constructions...
Like what?
The simple construction of using evolutionary learning to refine heuristics that were extracted from deep learning neural networks trained on expert data.
Two previously known and well understood components, put together in a new and novel way that expands our knowledge of what is possible. That is science.
Interesting. I think that is pretty clearly engineering :-)
Of course, this is all a matter of definitions.
It's not an either-or. Some reasonable working definitions: Science is a process by which we expand human knowledge. Engineering is using extant human knowledge to construct artifacts, sometimes repetitive, sometimes novel. Doing some mindless engineering task is not science. But doing something innovative and new makes available new knowledge, which if processed in the correct way is doing science. So you can do both.
You are basically saying that the creation of s'mores was science ("previously known and well understood components, put together in a new and novel way that expands our knowledge of what is possible").
My idea of science is more narrow.
The first person that created a s'more? Yes. Culinary science is a thing.