Philosophical Reflections on Data

Data was subject to a historical evolution from number to big data. Since the birth of number, data bear its innate characteristics as a kind of instrumental tools. In the course of the evolution of data, it comes two revolutions. The first data revolution happened when the modern science was emerged, where the fusion of data and scientific research was realized, advancing the occurrence of scientific revolution. The second data revolution occurred when big data plays a crucial role, which not only is changing the paradigm of scientific research, facilitating the quantitative study of social science, but also gives rise to a huge transformation in all social areas such as economy, society, military, and so on. To probe data microscopically from the perspective of philosophy of science and technology, different from the logical positivism or falsificationism, we propose that data should be in a position as equally important as theory, observation and phenomenon, forming a quaternion theory of “data-theory-observation-phenomenon”. The general features and the philosophical basis of data are also addressed.