Third Instar

This is a great brief article from Wired on the ways computing power has altered and continues to alter what science is and how it gets done.

faced with massive data, this approach to science — hypothesize, model, test — is becoming 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.

I don’t think we’re going to throw models out. I’ve never understood why the conclusion is that a trusted system becomes “obsolete” when something new comes along. We should be thinking in terms of addition, not substitution. The exception is when the new system undermines the foundations of the old, as was the case when the scientific method of explaining the universe replaced those based on religious faith.