A healthy balance between model building and data gathering

Too much theory without data, and speculations run amok. We get lost in a fog of models and idealizations that seldom have much to say about the world we live in. The maps invent all sorts of worlds and tell us very little about the world we live in, leaving us to get lost in fantasy. With too much data and no theory, though, we drown in confusion. We don’t know how to tell the story we are supposed to tell. We hear all sorts of tales about what is out there in the wilderness, but we don’t know how to chart the best path to reach our destination. The better the balance between speculative thinking and data gathering, the healthier the science that comes out.  

Marcelo Gleiser writing in BigThink