workshop

In Anderson’s 2008 Wired Article he describes how the data deluge is serving to make the scientific theory obsolete. Kitchen provides a rebuttal to Anderson’s argument that theory is dead with his superposition that in fact we have entered the fourth paradigm. What do you think? Do you beleive that theory is dead? Do you think we have indeed entered a paradigm shifiting revolution for how we describe, analyze, and understand the world?

I do not believe that theory is dead. I think that we have indeed entered a paradigm shifting revolutions with a larger emphasis on big data, but theory is still, nevertheless, required and still important. I understand the notion that sometimes knowledge-driven science creates issues because it collects data and forumlates it based on certain assumptions. Meanwhile, data-driven science allows us to answer questions that we didn’t even think to ask. However, what good is this data and information if we do not have the context or domain-specific knowledge to throughly understand them? Unless one is an expert in the field that the data is collected, it can be difficult to understand numbers and statistics wihtout context, background information, and theory.

Another good example why theory is not dead has to do with digital humanities. Big data provides so many opportunities for humanities, but at the same time, theory cannot be dead and data cannot speak for itself, especially when it comes to digital humanities. This is because arguments from literature cannot be treated like mere data. Oftentimes, algorithms miss the deep significance and rich social-context hidden behind words in literature. This creates a problem where only surface-level analaysis of humanities is occuring, instead of deep insight.

I think that theory isn’t dead, but there should be an emphasis on data-driven science combined with theory, in order to facilitate discussion and completely understand the big data.