Wikipedia—"Computer science is the scientific and practical approach to computation and its applications." You're likely referring to the practical approach. Many, however, take the scientific approach. The 2 are markedly different in that one group finds new things to do & the other how to use them
Computer Science is a Formal Science. It studies abstract concepts, logic, algorithms, etc., but with very real applications. Not to be confused with Natural Science which studies laws of Nature. But it is still a Science.
CS is a field that utilizes properties of light (optical drives; fiber), electricity (binary), and electromagnetism (HDD). Programming involves the use of logic the scientific method, arrays, etc. CS is more of an applied science, but it's 1 that's strongly dependent on physical sciences and math.
The scientific method can be applied when testing the practical applications of the theoretical, for example when testing the performance of algorithms.
It doesn't matter that most of it is concerned with knowingly or unknowingly utilizing theorems (engineering). There are still models and theorems emerging from it regularly.
Computer science... differs from physics in that it is not actually a science. It does not study natural objects. Rather, computer science is like engineering; it is all about getting something to do something.
sources:
Richard Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Computation, 1970
1 Science From Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge"(Online Etymology Dictionary. September 20,2014) 2 Science is usually regarderd as pattern finding of phenomena in the Universe. 3. The Universe contains the phenomena of "information" and patterns within that phenomena is studied using machines