Scientific Paradigms

Foreword: This post is a follow up from a previous post on the Forth Paradigm.

The Four Paradigms and some examples:

1st Paradigm: Experimental
Conducting simple experiments to confirm hypothesis (e.g. Ben Franklin and the Kite Experiment), Young double slit experiment, chemical reactions, etc

2nd Paradigm: Theoretical
Theories of the Natural Sciences, Theoretical Computer Science,

3rd Paradigm: Computational Science
Engineering based fields, Solving games, Four color theorem, computer simulations, etc

4th Paradigm: Data-Intensive Research
Data mining, the schematic web, machine learning, distributed systems, the LHC, etc


Question: what makes the 4th paradigm compelling: how does it stack against the previous paradigms (e.g. efficiency, feasibility, etc)

For download: The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery (the book)