Before the year 1900, germany was a superpower in natural science. All of the following disciplines were researched, teached and translated into practical application in germany:
mathematics, chemistry, medicine, physics, biology, philosophy, psychology
These disciplines are known as natural science or short as science and they were important during the industrial revolution. Germany was even better than the U.S. and the U.K. in researching the subjects and most of the books and academic journal were published in german.
The situation has changed after 1900 and especially after 1950 drastically. Not because has lost its interest in physics, mathematics or chemistry but because natural science has become obsolete for the advent of computer science. In the beginning, computer science was a sub-discipline inside mathematics which was about numerical optimization. Building computer hardware was often described as part of electronics. But with later iteration of computer hard- and software, computer science has established its own subject. With the advent of the internet, computer science doesn't even need printed books or journal but has invented electronic journals dedicated to the need of computer scientists.
There is a fundamental difference available between computer science ans natural science from the 1900s. Natural science like physics is working with static knowledge. A subject like mechanics isn't improving over the decades but its based on the same principles which were discovered 300 years ago. Its impossible to reinvent the Ohm's law or modify the Periodic table in chemistry. In other words, natural science from the 1900 isn't based on innovation but on preservation.
On the other hand, computer science works with a different paradigm. Computer science is reinventing itself every 10 years on a fundamental basis. Hardware and software from the 1990s has lost its traction since the 2000s. In contrast to mathematics, computer science has no textbook used in the university, but computer science is an endless amount of experiments which are trying to discover and invent something new. The motivation of computer scientists isn't to proof a former theory as valid, but to overcome existing knowledge. For example transistorized circuits were replaced by microprocessors, the Fortran language was replaced the C language and MS DOS was replaced by Windows.
There is some similarity available between arts and computer science. Both disciplines never discover natural laws, but they are creating something from scratch. Nature doesn't know something like TCP/IP protocol, but it was invented similar to a painting from Andy Warhol.
The development of Computer science is based on experiments and reinventing itself all the time. To allow this innovation take place, a certain natural language is required which makes it easy to establish new vocabulary. The German language doesn't fit to this needs, but English has a better ability to introduce new words. Its not surprising, that the English Wikipedia has the most articles which are 6.9 Million in total. Especially all the terms in computer science are formulated in English only and have no word in other languages like German, French or Chinese.
Let us describe the situation from a positive perspective. German is a great language to write a mathematics textbook which will be relevant for the next 50 years. German is also the perfect language to teach static knowledge in physics discovered 200 years ago. The problem is, that computer science isn't working with static knowledge and fixed vocabulary, but computer science is driven by creativity and the need for novelty. The overall question is how to replace existing technology with something better. For example:
- a Cathode-ray tube monitor can be replaced with a flatscreen monitor
- a magnetic disc can be replaced with a SSD solid state drive
- the 8bit homecomputer can be replaced with 32bit PC
- the A* path planner can be replaced with the RRT algorithm
- the gif fileformat can be replaced with the PNG format
- the 56kbit modem can be replaced with DSL modems
- ASCII encoding was replaced by Unicode
- proprietary software can be replaced with open source software
The list can be continued forever. In short, computer science isn't working with fixed sort of knowledge, but every discovery has only a short lifespan until it will be replaced by its successor. On the long run, computer science is producing a huge amount of obsolete hardware, software and algorithms which felt out of fashion. At the same time, there is a need for new ideas all the time.
From the perspective of computer science, the high amount of innovation is normal and desired. But from the perspective of natural science like mathematics or biology, its unusual. Classical natural science is working with a much smaller innovation rate. And older theories are never become obsolete, but they are confirmed and improved in minor parts. There is no need to throw away an older handbook about mathematics, because its unlikely that the knowledge written down in the book is wrong or obsolete. So we can say, that the self understanding of natural sciences which were important until 1900 is fundamental different to the self understanding in computer science.
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