Here’s a very interesting article on WIRED.
The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
"Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop
looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about
what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing
clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find
patterns where science cannot.
"The best practical example of this is the shotgun gene sequencing by
J. Craig Venter. Enabled by high-speed sequencers and supercomputers
that statistically analyze the data they produce, Venter went from
sequencing individual organisms to sequencing entire ecosystems. In
2003, he started sequencing much of the ocean, retracing the voyage of
Captain Cook. And in 2005 he started sequencing the air. In the
process, he discovered thousands of previously unknown species of
bacteria and other life-forms." [read more]
This reminded of the book, The Black Swan (see my review). Theoretical models are useful as starting points and for framing but in the long run our human tendency to categorize (Platonicity) and explain the causes of everything with theories (narrative fallacy) backed up with partial evidence (confirmation bias; fallacy of silent evidence) while concocting models of reality (ludic fallacy) make us blind to Black Swans (i.e. high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations).
In this Petabyte Age, mathematics, statistics, and a dose of serendipity trump theory. But that’s in the realm science, not philosophy.
Comments (2)
I think the key phrase there at the end is “normal expectations”. Normal is determined by our theories and models, and so if our models include the recognition of Black Swans and factor those in somehow, then they are accounted for. Almost all of the systems theory thinkers did that, and hence you have chaos theory, attractor points, etc. as theoretical ideas that actually seek to explain how novel (and seemingly unexpected) emergence happens.
The problem then, is that this becomes the new blind-spot and eventually we have to recognize that even seeing the emergence of radical novelty in systems is covering something even more fundamental up, and that there are better theories–and better assumptions by which we analyze data–that will make us make sense of the world, etc. And believe me, I’m not trying to assume that I have the slightest freaking clue as to what that is, just that the question has begun to interest me.
Thanks for linking to this article and for the great commentary.
One sentence from the article sums it up: “Who knows why people do what they do?”
We can do away with psychology, linguistics, sociology, we can do away with meaning. Perhaps we can do away with art and love while we are at it? All we need is cold, hard data. Positivists have always been tripped up by the unfortunate reality that even the scientific method contains an interior, subjective component – scientific hypotheses don’t grow on trees or otherwise lie around the objective landscape. They must still be generated by an interior consciousness to interpret it and give it meaning… until now! With enough data, we can remove the need for humans! We don’t know why they do what they do, and we don’t care, either. All that really matters is objective data.