Modelling Obsolete? Not so Fast...

I blogged earlier about the Wire magazine article in which the writer claimed that the scientific method was obsolete because of so much data. I suggested, kind of timidly, that I doubted that an increase in quality data would make the necessity to generate hypotheses and models of life obsolete. Now Luke McKinney responds and puts into words the things I was more or less thinking myself. Here's what it boils down to.

We've taken the liberty of reconstructing Isaac Newton's scientific achievements via the Anderson Method:

Newton: Wow, that apple fell. I will now drop a million other things and see if they all fall.

[Later]Yes, they all fall! Objects fall.

Viewer: So, how can we use that conclusion to progress engineering, technology or science?

Newton: >Shrugs< I 'unno. Things fall though. Maybe you could try just shoving millions of things together and seeing what happens?

Viewer: Thanks. By that strategy we should work out how to make a car by the year three billion.

It's only possible to advance when you understand the whys behind the what happened - how can you get to the moon armed only with the knowledge that things don't go up? Just observing patterns and saying you're done is what came BEFORE science.

The basic idea here is that data is just data without a theory. Theories may be based on observations, but the work of theory is ultimately and primarily an abstract construction. It's outside the data, in other words, and is an attempt to provide some explanation as to what the data mean. Simply having more data doesn't negate the requirement to have a model/theory. It probably only makes theory more important, in reality.