The Natural Science of Computing

In 2016, the scientific community thrilled to news that the LIGO collaboration had detected gravitational waves for the first time. LIGO is the latest in a long line of revolutionary technologies in astronomy, from the ability to'see' the universe from radio waves to gamma rays, or from detecting cosmic rays and neutrinos (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory--LIGO--is an NSF-supported collaborative effort by the U.S National Science Foundation and is operated by Caltech and MIT). Each time a new technology is deployed, it can open up a new window on the cosmos, and major new theoretical developments can follow rapidly. These, in turn, can inform future technologies. This interplay of technological and fundamental theoretical advance is replicated across all the natural sciences--which include, we argue, computer science.