31.7 Big Data

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accumulation of biological facts. The robot is certainly able to discover such facts but

the (inductive) invention of knowledge remains beyond its capabilities and, perhaps,

beyond the capabilities of any machine.

31.7

Big Data

Bioinformaticians have been at the forefront of developing strategies to effectively

manage and integrate the massive amounts of data being generated by genomic

and related investigations (such as those associated with the Covid-19 pandemic),

facilitated by the breathtaking advances in sequencing technology.

Just as biology goes far beyond merely the study of living organisms, so does

correspondingly the remit of bioinformatics. Taking a high-level view, perhaps the

greatest contribution of bioinformatics to civilization as a whole is to have given

humanity the confidence to tackle colossal datasets, and ask research questions that

formerly would have appeared to be completely out of reach. An example is under-

standing the degree to which a child’s early development influences the rest of life.

There is, potentially, an enormous database; what one would need to do is some-

thing like taking school reports at age 6 and correlating them with the subsequent

achievements of the child in later life, throughout adulthood. Such a study, carried

out over the entire cohort of a nation’s children, could yield profound insight, which

should enable mistakes made in early years upbringing to be identified and reme-

died. Successful mastery of this area of knowledge would have almost unimaginable

consequences for the power and prestige of the nation, and perhaps give new impe-

tus to social contracts faltering worldwide. This statistical knowledge would replace

what has hitherto been little more than anecdotal. Every school is proud to advertise

a handful of alumni who became conventional celebrities, ignoring a much larger

number who probably achieved much more. And then we should try to correlate the

outcomes with a few other key variables, of which very likely the most important is

the parental environment. ²² But is it really that? Is it the school? Is it some impersonal

attribute such as household income or distance from London, or capital city? ²³ One

can always retrospectively find a plausible “explanation” for individual cases. Or is

it something germane to tychism—“time and chance happens to them all”? ²⁴ Big

data, guided by statistical models, may help to answer this long-standing question.

22 Cf. Heath and Clifford (1980).

23 Cf. Burks’ classic study, briefly discussed in Sect. 10.2.

24 Ramsden (2022).