Adding Methodological Testing to Naur's Anti-formalism

TL;DR

This paper integrates Lakatosian scientific methodology with Naur's anti-formalism to challenge dominant computing paradigms, emphasizing the importance of organizational and philosophical issues in understanding computing as a scientific discipline.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework combining Naur's descriptive philosophy with MSRP to empirically test computing theories and critiques ideological suppression in computing research.

Findings

MSRP can be used to test and challenge existing computing paradigms.

Institutional suppression of critical discussions hinders scientific progress in computing.

MSRP-based disproofs provide alternative insights into programming and social processes in computing.

Abstract

Peter Naur is the leading critic of formalist computing because of his extensive writings that disprove the now dominate characterization of human thought as cognitive information processing. Naur criticizes the ideological position that only discourse that adopts computer inspired forms are acceptable. Lakatosian philosophy of the methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP) is added to Naur's studies to allow testing of computing theories. After discussing Naur's criticism of mechanical cognitive information processing, I show how to add MSRP competition to Naur's descriptive philosophy. Next, Naur's claim that computing can not become scientific until organizational issues involving ideological suppression of discussions of computing and human thinking are solved is corroborated by institutional suppression of my 1970s attempts to criticize structured programming (SP). Various problems in computing related philosophy are discussed. First, I argue that my MSRP based degenerating research programme disproof of SP is better than Naur's programming as a human activity, Demillo's social processes and Fetzer's unprovable causal nature. Three areas for post ideologically based computing study are discussed: computing as a path to rediscovering 19th century conceptions of infinity, axiom of choice testing facilitated by computing and relation to physical theory, and testing concrete complexity methods based on efficiency proof analysis.