I was also thinking of the analogies with the former structuralist and poststructuralist ‘theory’ hegemony in literary studies and the current movement in the humanities to restore the possibility of more innocent readings of literature — wasn’t it by the way Althusser (does anyone read him any more?) who proposed that innocent reasdings were impossible?

The argument against this (post)structuralist anti-innocent-reading stance is, of course, that it precludes the possibility for us to be surprised by the text.

Wish someone would write something about the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition.

Classical work are, of course, the Herschels’ surveys, Dreyer’s NGC, the Bonner Durchmusterung, the photographic Harvard Sky Patrol; more recent work include the first Palomar Sky Surveys (financed by the National Geogr Soc) and second dito, the UGC, the 3C, the Uhuru catalogue, the IRAS Survey, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey &c.

Stuff we didn’t know existed were found in these surveys, whole new classes of objects. Perhaps it is not very fruitful to debate whether theory or data is first, but I think for sure you could say that some parts of modern astronomy is kind of data driven.

I guess these projects don’t get as much publicity as they ought to, perhaps because they don’t fit in with some of the dogmas of philosophy of science.

And YES — I think Venter’s project is extraordinarily cool! In addition to surveying the oceans for vast amounts of new bacterial genomes he is also involved in creating life! A true maverick!

But I don’t agree it being a physics vs. biology thing. In astronomy, for instance, there are these large survey projects going on all the time. They don’t get much publicity from philosophers of science, but they are nevertheless an important part of astronomy and astrophysics.