A mental model for mashed potatoes?
In the most recent edition of Edge, Chris Anderson suggests that perhaps the "data deluge" will make the scientific method obsolete. That is, in an age where data comes by the petabyte, perhaps mental models and hypotheses can be abandoned and analyzing information for correlations is enough. I'm not a strict follower of the scientific method, so I don't feel that I can make a strong point either way. However, I am reminded of the mashup craze. In creating a mashup, people don't necessarily have a strong model going in; in many cases they just throw data together and see what happens. This "on the fly" experimentation is possible because of computers and applications that enable it. Intuitively, I would say that reality falls somewhere in the middle. We might create a mental model (e.g., a recipe) for the perfect mashed potatoes, or we might throw a bunch of potatoes and spices in a pot and see what happens. And both approaches are probably important.
