This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: (1) Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and (2) there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology.
Via luiy
Whilst Jim Gray envisages the fourth paradigm of science to be data-intensive and a radically new extension of the established scientific method, others suggest that Big Data ushers in a new era of empiricism, wherein the volume of data, accompanied by techniques that can reveal their inherent truth, enables data to speak for themselves free of theory. The empiricist view has gained credence outside of the academy, especially within business circles, but its ideas have also taken root in the new field of data science and other sciences. In contrast, a new mode of data-driven science is emerging within traditional disciplines in the academy. In this section, the epistemological claims of both approaches are critically examined, mindful of the different drivers and aspirations of business and the academy, with the former preoccupied with employing data analytics to identify new products, markets and opportunities rather than advance knowledge per se, and the latter focused on how best to make sense of the world and to determine explanations as to phenomena and processes.
http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/1/2053951714528481.full