I don’t think we have a real disagreement. I haven’t said that more rigorous formalism is always better, quite the contrary. I was writing about objective methods of looking at the results. Physicists can ignore mathematical rigor because they have experimental tests which finally decide whether their theory is worth attention. Computer scientists can finally write down their algorithm and look whether it works. These are objective rules which validate the results.
Whether the rules are sensible or not is decided by common sense. My point is that it is easier to decide that about the rules of the whole field than about individual theories, and that’s why objective rules are useful.
Of course, saying “common sense” does in fact mean that we don’t know how did we decide, and doesn’t specify the judgement too much. One man’s common sense may be other man’s insanity.
Oh yes, I didn’t mean to imply that you disagreed with everything I wrote in the above comment. My intent was to give a self-contained summary of my position on the issue, and the specific points I raised were not necessarily in response to your claims.
I don’t think we have a real disagreement. I haven’t said that more rigorous formalism is always better, quite the contrary. I was writing about objective methods of looking at the results. Physicists can ignore mathematical rigor because they have experimental tests which finally decide whether their theory is worth attention. Computer scientists can finally write down their algorithm and look whether it works. These are objective rules which validate the results.
Whether the rules are sensible or not is decided by common sense. My point is that it is easier to decide that about the rules of the whole field than about individual theories, and that’s why objective rules are useful.
Of course, saying “common sense” does in fact mean that we don’t know how did we decide, and doesn’t specify the judgement too much. One man’s common sense may be other man’s insanity.
Oh yes, I didn’t mean to imply that you disagreed with everything I wrote in the above comment. My intent was to give a self-contained summary of my position on the issue, and the specific points I raised were not necessarily in response to your claims.