Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Oh, and no, I don't think "Library Sciences" has anything whatsoever to do with science. In fact, I believe that is a very unfortunate choice of words to describe that major. Unless you library scientists are now conducting important library experiments in your library laboratories.
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:-) I'm a molecular biologist, and ended up hanging out with a lot of science and engineering majors in school. The general consensus among our lot was that if it has "science" in the name, it's not science. It sometimes approaches closely enough to be engineering, like "materials science" or "food science" but it can roam as far as "creation science" and "christian science"
So far I have not met a subject that invalidated this rule of thumb. Mind you, I have great respect for librarians and libraries and if "library science" is the study of library organization or some such, it sounds to me like a worthwhile endeavor. Just, not science. Information architecture, maybe.
Along lingustic lines, it sounds to me like we're having a major argument between the descriptivists and the prescriptivists. I lean toward descriptivism myself, but recognize the value of prescriptivism in making it possible for people to learn to imitate upper class speech / writing for the purpose of making people take them seriously. Poorly done imitations of upper class speech and writing stick out like a sore thumb to people who know how to do it well, so if you're going to do it, it's probably best to do it "right".
That's my two cents, anyway.
Oh, and I chose cake. Chocolate by preference, but any type of cake is better than death.