Figure 3.

Pathways to knowledge. Accumulating knowledge is a continuous interplay between data accumulation (along the x-axis) and development of a mechanistic understanding of the system under study (along y-axis). In some fields—e.g. some areas of molecular biology, market research—data accumulate rapidly and a data-driven pathway to knowledge is most productive. In other fields—e.g. the study of ecological effects of extreme events—observations are hard to come by. These fields need to rely strongly on theory development that may be based on relatively little data at first. This is what we call the theory-driven pathway. Adapted from Holling [35].