Formalism II. Top–Down Approach: From Sparse or Big Data to Laws

Chap. 6 introduces the 2nd Foundation which is a top-down approach that commences from sparse or big data to laws. The challenge is to develop some qualitative understanding or even a quantitative formulation that will enable us to deal with both cases of big data and sparse data. In this Chap. 6. we develop a methodology that allows us to use the available data and to establish relations between them by means of a general formalism. By invoking results of Chap. 5 we show how we can reduce the complexity of a system. Our point of departure is Shannon information (SHI).