"All models are wrong, but some are useful." So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmologial equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now.....

The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supercedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

Chris Anderson. THE END OF THEORY: THE DATA DELUGE MAKES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OBSOLETE. Wired. July 08.