Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?

Does the advent of machine learning mean the classic methodology of hypothesise, predict and test has had its day?

Isaac Newton apocryphally discovered his second law – the one about gravity – after an apple fell on his head. Much experimentation and data analysis later, he realised there was a fundamental relationship between force, mass and acceleration. He formulated a theory to describe that relationship – one that could be expressed as an equation, F=ma – and used it to …

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