I think a statistical view of that dichotomy is "parametric statistics" vs. "non-parametric statistics": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonparametric_statistics

I think a statistical view of that dichotomy is "parametric statistics" vs. "non-parametric statistics": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonparametric_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonparametric_statistics I see "machine learning" as exploring computational approaches to non-parametric statistics. The idea of data-driven model-estimation is not outside the scope of "statistics".