Page 287 - Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics

268 Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics — Chapter 13

itself with facts, the other turns toward the meaning of Kane's life. Taking
the viewpoint of scientific reasoning as we have considered it in this book, the
first concern is ontological in character (i.e., somewhere in the world exists
an objective thing called "rosebud"), while the second is epistemological (i.e.,
the word "rosebud" had a special meaning in the context of Mr. Kane's life).
Hence, as the narrative unfolds, an attempt is made to account both for the
facts and for the meaning behind the facts.
Table 13.1. Double perspectives.

Citizen Kane BME

"Rosebud" "Knowledge bases"
Role of "rosebud" Role of "knowledge bases"
in Kane's life in geostatistician's conceptual
framework of spatiotemporal
analysis and mapping

The situation with the narrative of Citizen Kane is analogous, mutatis
mutandis, to the double perspective of BME (Table 13.1). The procedure
leading to a meaningful and informative map involves (1) ontological investi-
gation with questions such as "What are the objectively available knowledge
bases (facts, data, laws, etc.)?"; and (2) epistemic investigation that seeks
the answers to questions like, "What is the meaning or role of these bases in
the context of scientific map building and interpretation?." Investigations (1)
and (2) are closely related. To continue our metaphor, this double perspective,
for both the film's narrative and the BME paradigm, expands the study do-
main to include the observed ("rosebud" and natural processes, respectively) as
well as the observer (the examiner of Kane's existence and the geostatistician,
respectively).

The Argument of Modern Spatiotemporal
Geostatistics

The burden of the argument underlying the development of modern geostatis-
tics is that geostatisticians should always try to see their work critically in the
light of well-established scientific methods and sound epistemic arguments. In
such a context, modern spatiotemporal geostatistics is viewed as a field of
concepts, theories, and methods whose initial conditions are the knowledge
bases that are currently available. The field involves depth, originality, and
excellence—factors that have been and should ever be present in the evalua-
tion of a scientific approach. But somewhere in the mass-production of recipes
and provisional tricks, these requisites have been lost.