Great post, Chris. Let me try to give my answer to your questions.
“Is GCA an art or a science?”
I personally think that the process of designing, building and maintaining a golf course benefits from some "science" particularly in the areas of biology and chemistry. It also benefits (in each of those three phases) from the "artistic" abilities and sensitivities of the main players--designers, engineers, operators, superintendents, and owners. Most of all, however, I think it benefits from good old common sense and trial and error. The building and ongoing operation of a golf course is far to complex an activity to allow scientific or artistic analysis to be anything but referential, in most instances. We should also recognise that what is going on in our arguments on this site usually has nothing to do with "golf course architecture" (GCA) per se, but with our analyses/opinions of the pros and cons of various golf courses and their architects. It is a subtle difference, but a very important one, nevertheless.
“Why should GCA be different? (NB--this relates to the "all material facts" part of Pat's arguments)
It should. For one thing, golf is far more important than religion, politics and friends (insert smiley face in here for the humor-impaired). For another, we are mostly not talking about GCA, but about our opinions of GCA (see above). We are like the people in Plato’s cave trying to make sense of what is happening in the outside world by interpreting the flickering of the shadows on the wall of the cave. In such circumstances, the more facts we can get and the fewer uninformed opinions which are posted the better. In this regard, I think you have focused on the wrong modifier of "facts." To me the operative word in that phrase is "material." In the instance at hand--Sandpines--we have very few material facts to talk about (the few 1st hand observations of TommyN, SlagB, MikeE, etc), so we spend 350+ posts talking about the shadows we see (2-dimensional pictures, routing maps, pictures of land 2-50 miles away) and what we think about other people’s opinions of these shadows. In this way, GCA (the Golf Club Atlas “GCA”) very much imitates real life, alas.
“Why should we be unbiased? What are the consequences of bias as it pertains to GCA?”
We needn’t be. It’s a free country(ies). But, it clogs up the bandwidth and demeans the high standards of this suite when people don’t use their brains, or use them for invective or ridicule. The consequences are that we lose out on the incredible learning opportunities which GCA (the site and the practice) can be. Someone on the Cigar thread posted the dictionary definition of bias. I’ll repeat it, in full, from my dictionary:
“A particular tendency or inclination, esp. one which prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question.”
Well, to me this site is all about questions. None of us have the answers, except for the most trivial of facts, to anything which we discuss of importance. Given that, any post which reflects an attitude which “prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question” should be anathema to us. These attitudes do exist on this site, however, in both the negative and positive senses (we blindly adulate as well as we blindly condemn), and it is to our detriment that so many of us seem to condone that activity.
I commend PatM for fighting the good fight, even though I have never met him and do not always agree with his opinions of golf and on GCA. If you want my humble opinion, Pat is the lightning rod for more bias on this site than is Rees Jones, or even Fazio. Such uncharitable behavior is a pity.