BoI items

Hi DD if you're still about.....

Statistics Science Explanationless

  I get it I think about explanationless science, but I find it hard to
see why you regard statistical science as inappropriately
explanationless. What sort of reforms should be felt by the field?

The proliferation of explanatory domains - not just science, but
political, economic, corporate, military, R&D, international, has driven
things along modular lines. Statistical science became highly
standardized into a narrow but important component of explanation
formation, should sourcing data and statistics have some part to play.

Surely the distinction here is that statistical science contributes to
explanation construction in important ways where data will be drawn on
in the process. I would have thought you'd heavily back a separation of
data analysis and explanation. Are explanations inherant to data?

Standardized fields are not explanationless. They embody standardized
explanations. But the explanations can only ever be of the the
individual statistical properties of data, but never the information as
a whole, it's part in the world, it's relevance to a particular purpose.
That's the sense explanation is regarded outside, or not part of, the
science.

I would have imagined you would not only agree with this arrangement,
but would actually regard explanations within generic data analysis as
scientism? Sorry, bit long winded.

Origin of Life

Do you or anyone remember where you talk about this?