Bremen 2017 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 6: Symposium: Epistemology of Big Data in Physics IV

AGPhil 6.3: Invited Talk

Friday, March 17, 2017, 11:45–12:30, GW2 B2900

Do the Beads Still Need a String? Old and New Challenges for Turning (Big) Data into Evidence — •Johannes Lenhard — University of Bielefeld

How are data turned into evidence? Finding answers to this question is a central endeavour of epistemology and methodology of the sciences. One classic 19th century locus is the dispute between John Stuart Mill and William Whewell about the nature of scientific knowledge. Does it grow with the amount of data available, or is it of a general character that is based on something different than data? Whewell remarked that collecting observational data is not sufficient, since *the beads still need a string.

Recent claims about data-driven research (DDR) seem to challenge this viewpoint. DDR allegedly heralds a new paradigm in which the data themselves can replace also the string.

My talk critically assesses recent disputes and claims about DDR and big data. One strategy is by historical comparison to earlier, pre-computer examples.