Book Review

What is computational science? We have all heard the cheerleading. Computational science is the third great leg of science, to take its rightful place alongside observation and experiment, on the one hand, and theory, on the other. But what has computational science really got that makes it a third way? Is it not just applied theory, computing the consequences of an equation? Is it not simply mining observations or controlling experiments and recording the results? Is there really a body of knowledge, distinct from any field of application, that stands alone? Describing such a body of knowledge is where the book described in the following stands.