The Wright et al (1997) article describes three positions taken from the GIS-L debate, placed on a continuum from tool to science. However, the examples used to prove/disprove that GIS is a science aren’t more obvious than the debate itself. One of the arguments is that if GIS is a science, then so is statistical software. Geography and math would then be the ‘sciences’, which are facilitated by the use of ‘tools’. Yet, another user argues that math and stats aren’t sciences either. If there is no clear consensus on the role of mathematics, how can we expect the GIS debate to ever be resolved?
Moreover, it is unclear to me why we must define a field as a science. The author argues that “[c]learly it does matter whether or not ‘doing GIS’ is ‘doing science,’ if for no other reason than that ‘doing science’ is often regarded as a code-phrase for academic legitimacy” (Wright, 354), but for this I come back to the math argument. I don’t want to be the one to break it to those doing graduate work in the math department that, as they are not always considered to be ‘doing science’, their academic pursuits aren’t legitimate.
Finally, who decides what is or isn’t a science? If we are waiting for the online community to settle this, we might be waiting for a very long time. Before we can embark on the GIS as a science debate, I think it would be wise to get agree on one definition of science.
-IMC