Data Faith
Where we are now, in what we understand of science as a process, rather than where we are in the progress of science itself, is not so dissimilar to where astronomers were before the scientific revolution of the 17th century. They continued to cling to the idea of the Ptolemaic universe in the face of its increasing failing. It's not that modern science itself is failing in the same way at all, as the way the Ptolemaic universe model failed, when viewed from the point of view of scientific method. There's nothing wrong with the basic principle of modern scientific method itself, as such. What's failing is the human understanding of what science is, what it is doing, how we should be doing it, and where it is going. What the early astronomers failed to understand was, similarly, what it was they were doing, and how they should be doing it.
Science, operating in exactly the way it is now, is not just going to go on and on, endlessly revealing the truth about the nature of the world in which we live, as long as we can just "get more data". Firstly, because the increasingly detailed or revised understanding based on more and more data, can only ever reveal what stable data can reveal. That's the nature of scientific method. And Thomas Kuhn already said this, more than 60 years ago. But the message has not really sunk in yet.
Secondly, and just as importantly, the thing called "modern scientific method" as a whole does not free human beings who are doing the science from the influence of the follies of human evolutionary psychology, in what they are doing. Despite any faith that anyone might have that scientific method somehow circumvents that. That is also where a religion-like faith comes into science. Because science was never about discovering "facts", "data", or "what's out there" irrespective of human beings.
Science and scientific understanding comes through human beings. It always has done. It always will do, even as we use AI. And furthermore, scientific inquiry is not about a world that has nothing to do with human beings other than that human beings happen to be studying it. That position is simply no longer tenable in the face of all modern scientific fact itself, across all scientific disciplines. And even if we say that this is a question for philosophers, and it doesn't really matter for science, the way we are currently doing science is still based on tacitly subscribing to that very position.
The edict is "We must follow the data". This, in its current incarnation, is another faith-like edict in science. And it is not that we should not follow data. But the edict as it stands is based on a misunderstanding of what data is, coupled to a subtle but powerful psychological position. It lacks the understanding that stable data is what has stabilised. And not only that, but it has been stabilised precisely, through the scientific method. Which demands stable data.
After the scientific revolution of the 17th century, astronomers inhabited a different world. Just as Kuhn describes. By the time the revolution was completed, they no longer looked into the sky and saw endless circles and circles within circles. And when modern science realises the nature of data itself, we will again begin to inhabit a different world. But first, we have to understand what "following the data" really means, and stop misunderstanding its objectivity through the psychologically biased interpretation that its objectivity means it is "out there" separate from us.
The great difficulty is not in lack of data, the nature of the data, or an unwieldy quantity of data. The great difficulty is in the necessary human cooperation. Which requires putting aside competition and the race to be the first to publish. Or the race to publish in order to get funding. It requires the cooperation that is necessary in order to handle data that is not stable. And that, requires more than just more data.
Science, operating in exactly the way it is now, is not just going to go on and on, endlessly revealing the truth about the nature of the world in which we live, as long as we can just "get more data". Firstly, because the increasingly detailed or revised understanding based on more and more data, can only ever reveal what stable data can reveal. That's the nature of scientific method. And Thomas Kuhn already said this, more than 60 years ago. But the message has not really sunk in yet.
Secondly, and just as importantly, the thing called "modern scientific method" as a whole does not free human beings who are doing the science from the influence of the follies of human evolutionary psychology, in what they are doing. Despite any faith that anyone might have that scientific method somehow circumvents that. That is also where a religion-like faith comes into science. Because science was never about discovering "facts", "data", or "what's out there" irrespective of human beings.
Science and scientific understanding comes through human beings. It always has done. It always will do, even as we use AI. And furthermore, scientific inquiry is not about a world that has nothing to do with human beings other than that human beings happen to be studying it. That position is simply no longer tenable in the face of all modern scientific fact itself, across all scientific disciplines. And even if we say that this is a question for philosophers, and it doesn't really matter for science, the way we are currently doing science is still based on tacitly subscribing to that very position.
The edict is "We must follow the data". This, in its current incarnation, is another faith-like edict in science. And it is not that we should not follow data. But the edict as it stands is based on a misunderstanding of what data is, coupled to a subtle but powerful psychological position. It lacks the understanding that stable data is what has stabilised. And not only that, but it has been stabilised precisely, through the scientific method. Which demands stable data.
After the scientific revolution of the 17th century, astronomers inhabited a different world. Just as Kuhn describes. By the time the revolution was completed, they no longer looked into the sky and saw endless circles and circles within circles. And when modern science realises the nature of data itself, we will again begin to inhabit a different world. But first, we have to understand what "following the data" really means, and stop misunderstanding its objectivity through the psychologically biased interpretation that its objectivity means it is "out there" separate from us.
The great difficulty is not in lack of data, the nature of the data, or an unwieldy quantity of data. The great difficulty is in the necessary human cooperation. Which requires putting aside competition and the race to be the first to publish. Or the race to publish in order to get funding. It requires the cooperation that is necessary in order to handle data that is not stable. And that, requires more than just more data.