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Is CS Science or Engineering?  Kinds of science and kinds of engineering
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1.
The German-American philosopher Carl Hempel (1905-1997) distinguished
between "empirical" and "non-empirical" sciences in:

Hempel, Carl G. (1966), Philosophy of Natural Science
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall);
see "Scope and Aim of this Book", online at:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/Papers.by.Others/hempel66.pdf

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2.
* empirical sciences:
	- explore, describe, explain, and predict events that occur in
	  the world 
	- empirical statements are statements that need experimental
	  support
	- can be divided into:
		# natural sciences:  physics, chemistry, biology,
				     & some parts of psychology, etc.
		# social sciences:  sociology, anthropology, economics,
				    political science, history, & other
				    parts of psychology, etc.

* non-empirical sciences:
	- non-empirical statements don't need experimental support
	- yet they are true of, and confirmable by, empirical evidence
	- can be divided into:
		# logic
		# mathematics

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3.
The relationship of the non-empirical to the empirical sciences raises
issues expressed by the title of, and discussed in:

Wigner, Eugene (1960),
"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences",
Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13(1) (February). 
online at:
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March02/Wigner/Wigner.html
and
http://www.mathshelper.co.uk/Unreasonable%20Effectiveness%20of%20Mathematics.pdf

There is an interesting reply from a computer scientist in:

Hamming, R.W. (1980), "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics",
American Mathematical Monthly 87(2) (February)
online at:
http://www.jstor.org.gate.lib.buffalo.edu/stable/2321982
and
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.html

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4.
Where does CS fit into Hempel's scheme?

* CS arose from logic and math (as we'll see when we discuss its history)

* But it also arose from the development of calculators and computers as
  tools to solve logical and mathematical problems.

So maybe it's both empirical and non-empirical?	

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5.
The Argentine-Canadian philosopher Mario Bunge (b. 1919) has an
orthogonal distinction, which he describes in:

Bunge, Mario (1974), "Towards a Philosophy of Technology",
in Michalos, Alex C. (ed.), Philosophical Problems of Science and Technology
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon): 28-47.
online at:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/Papers.by.Others/bunge74.pdf

Science (which is just the application of the scientific method) is
divided into:

* pure science:
	- which applies the scientific method to increasing our knowledge
	  of reality (e.g., cell biology is a pure science)

* applied science:
	- which applies the scientific method to enhancing our welfare
	  and power (e.g., cancer research is an applied science)
	- other applied sciences are:
		# operations research (math applied to management)
		# pharmacology (chemistry applied to biology)
		# engineering

Therefore, CS would not be an engineering discipline.
Rather, both CS & engineering are applied sciences in Bunge's classification