The Issue of The Datum

Data, as finite, can never be merely fit without presupposition. The theory of the data, as what it is, is the presupposition that discloses the data in the first place through the act of measurement. As independent and identical (i.i.d.) measurements, there is not temporality to the measurement activities in serial, so the ordering of the samples is not relevant. But, this means that there is no temporality to the disclosure of the object at hand, preventing one measurement from being distinguished from another – they are either all simultaneous or noncomparable. Thus, i.i.d. random variables (measurement resultants) as a whole describe the different time-invariant superpositions of the system in question since at the single time of the serial measurements all the sample-values were found together at once or in a unity. To ‘force’ an order on the data by some random indexing is an unnecessary addition of data to our data-sampling process and thus an analysis that requires an ordering while be extraneous to the matter at hand. Thus, data as ‘unhypothesized’ describes a state-system broken in its spatio-temporality, unable to reveal itself as itself in unity, but rather as several (many) different states all occurring with a minor existence (). In the schemata of Heidegger (Being & Time), such things are present-at-hand in that they have been removed from their interlocking chains of signification from-which & for-which they exist through participation in the World as ready-at-hand – their existence is in question.

The Mimetics of Meaning

The meaning of a datum is its intelligibility within an interpretive context of signification. An Interpretation gives a specificity to its underlying distribution. A rational Interpretation to data gives a rational structure to its conditionality. In the circular process of interpretation, an assumption is made from which to understand the datum, while in the branching process, these assumptions are hierarchically decomposed.