The Data Myth
How often have we heard in science "We just need more data"? As if when we get more data we will understand. Another frequent declaration is "We must follow the data". This is not least due to the way science is taught and the way scientists are trained.
It's not that we don't need data, or to follow the data. It is that we don't just need more data. We need better intelligence.
More than 60 years ago Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions communicated the important message that nature does not just consist of fixed, stable data. But 60 years later, it still hasn't really sunk in.
Nature doesn't just consist of fixed, stable data. And science's job is not just about mining fixed, stable data. This assumption is a human assumption, based on the way human, evolutionary, symbolic intelligence is working, not a scientifically ascertained principle of nature.
What science does, in its current condition, is to verify the aspect of nature that provides sufficiently fixed, stable data. Reproducibility. With redundancy. Because without that, it cannot verify anything. This is built into the nature of scientific method. But it's not built into the nature of nature. It's only built into what science, in its current condition, can ascertain about nature. And consequently, it determines the nature of what we call "technology".
We are now at a crossroads. Which direction we go in, depends on how prepared we are to give up our evolutionarily driven attachment to our evolutionary ideas about the nature of the world in which we are living, in relation to ourselves. And the consequent idea that "data" is objective because nature is objective, and nature is objective because nature is separate from us. As if nature has, essentially, nothing to do with us other than that we happen to be studying nature.
It's not really the principle that is difficult to understand. What's difficult is letting go of an idea that has been hundreds of years in the making, that now justifies itself on the ground of its success, without examining this situation any more closely. Plato's Allegory of the Cave would suffice.
The scientists sit in the cave, chained by their discipline, facing the cave wall, the fire burning behind them. Nature moves between the scientists' backs and the fire, casting shadows on the wall of the cave, which the scientists take to be "reality". They build up a knowledge of the play of shadows on the wall, by making measurements.
And then one day they discover part of their own shadow, in the act of making the measurements, as they make their measurements. And they realise the connection. The separation between the "observer" and the "observed" seems to dissolve. Quantum mechanics is born. And yet the scientists are not on the cave wall. They are still chained by their way of thinking. And the shadow is still a shadow.
Still, what they have learned has been tremendously successful at predicting the way the shadows on the wall of the cave will behave. So now, the chained cave dwellers, by making their own shadows, based on the way nature has been playing behind their backs, and with the help of the chained scientists and their measurements, are able to create amazing shadow manipulations and shadow technologies. Which "proves" that their technique is correct. Or so it seems.
But what will it take for them to realise the fire? Let alone to realise that they are in a cave, and to discover what is outside the cave, in the sunlight?
It's not that we don't need data, or to follow the data. It is that we don't just need more data. We need better intelligence.
More than 60 years ago Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions communicated the important message that nature does not just consist of fixed, stable data. But 60 years later, it still hasn't really sunk in.
Nature doesn't just consist of fixed, stable data. And science's job is not just about mining fixed, stable data. This assumption is a human assumption, based on the way human, evolutionary, symbolic intelligence is working, not a scientifically ascertained principle of nature.
What science does, in its current condition, is to verify the aspect of nature that provides sufficiently fixed, stable data. Reproducibility. With redundancy. Because without that, it cannot verify anything. This is built into the nature of scientific method. But it's not built into the nature of nature. It's only built into what science, in its current condition, can ascertain about nature. And consequently, it determines the nature of what we call "technology".
We are now at a crossroads. Which direction we go in, depends on how prepared we are to give up our evolutionarily driven attachment to our evolutionary ideas about the nature of the world in which we are living, in relation to ourselves. And the consequent idea that "data" is objective because nature is objective, and nature is objective because nature is separate from us. As if nature has, essentially, nothing to do with us other than that we happen to be studying nature.
It's not really the principle that is difficult to understand. What's difficult is letting go of an idea that has been hundreds of years in the making, that now justifies itself on the ground of its success, without examining this situation any more closely. Plato's Allegory of the Cave would suffice.
The scientists sit in the cave, chained by their discipline, facing the cave wall, the fire burning behind them. Nature moves between the scientists' backs and the fire, casting shadows on the wall of the cave, which the scientists take to be "reality". They build up a knowledge of the play of shadows on the wall, by making measurements.
And then one day they discover part of their own shadow, in the act of making the measurements, as they make their measurements. And they realise the connection. The separation between the "observer" and the "observed" seems to dissolve. Quantum mechanics is born. And yet the scientists are not on the cave wall. They are still chained by their way of thinking. And the shadow is still a shadow.
Still, what they have learned has been tremendously successful at predicting the way the shadows on the wall of the cave will behave. So now, the chained cave dwellers, by making their own shadows, based on the way nature has been playing behind their backs, and with the help of the chained scientists and their measurements, are able to create amazing shadow manipulations and shadow technologies. Which "proves" that their technique is correct. Or so it seems.
But what will it take for them to realise the fire? Let alone to realise that they are in a cave, and to discover what is outside the cave, in the sunlight?