Coal to Diamonds

In this commentary to Napoletani et al. (Foundations of Science 16:1–20, 2011), we put agnostic science in a wider historical context of philosophy of mathematics. Secondly, the parallel to Tukey’s “exploratory data analysis” will be discussed. Thirdly, it will be argued that what is new is the mutually interdependent dynamics of data (on which Napoletani et al. focus) and of computational modeling—which puts science closer to engineering and vice versa.