I think the phrase "scientific understanding" is essentially qualitative, meaning that humans can disagree about what we "understand" and how "scientific" it is, and there's no objective way to adjudicate that fight.
How many physicists really believe they fully understand quantum mechanics? The theory is probablistic and strange but produces very accurate predictions.
The true measure of science is matching observations to hypotheses, and in that respect the approach that Norvig defends has demonstrated success. Google's language tools work well much of the time. Watson beat Ken Jennings.
Other branches of science are beginning to make more use of "big data" approaches as well. A friend doing post-doctoral research on evolution spends most of his time behind a laptop coding against big sets of digitized genetic information.
How many physicists really believe they fully understand quantum mechanics? The theory is probablistic and strange but produces very accurate predictions.
The true measure of science is matching observations to hypotheses, and in that respect the approach that Norvig defends has demonstrated success. Google's language tools work well much of the time. Watson beat Ken Jennings.
Other branches of science are beginning to make more use of "big data" approaches as well. A friend doing post-doctoral research on evolution spends most of his time behind a laptop coding against big sets of digitized genetic information.