Two sides

From APIDesign

Edsger Dijkstra wrote an interesting essay called On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides, which, in some parts, nicely contributes to discussion about rationalism, empiricism and cluelessness. Here are few quotes I found inspiring.

Platonic or Pragmatic?

Traditionally there are two ways in which science can be justified, the Platonic and the pragmatic one. In the Platonic way — "l'art pour l'art" — science justifies itself by its beauty and internal consistency, in the pragmatic way science is justified by the usefulness of its products.

My overall impression is that along this scale Europe, for better or for worse, is more Platonic, whereas the USA, and Canada to a lesser extent, are more pragmatic...

Tolerance for soft science

The first phenomenon is a greater tolerance for the soft sciences which purport to contribute to the solutions of "real" problems, but whose "intellectual contents" are singularly lacking. (When I was a student at Leyden, a quarter of a century ago, economy and psychology had been admitted to the campus, but only with great reservations and absolutely no one considered them as respectable; we had not dreamt of "management science" — I think we would have regarded it as a contradiction in terms— and "business administration" as an academic discipline is still utterly preposterous.)

My note: Certainly a business administration can't be platonic. It has to be pragmatic, if not barbarian.