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You're right: predicting is the key goal, not "explaining". A similarly unhelpful word (which comes up a lot in proposals) is "understand". Often, "to underst

You're right: predicting is the key goal, not "explaining". A similarly unhelpful word (which comes up a lot in proposals) is "understand". Often, "to understand X" often means little more than "to not be surprised by X". At one point, people explained and understood in terms of mystical thinking that we now regard as quaint and wrong-headed. A more robust approach is to predict, and then to check those predictions against new, or at least independent, observations.

yiyus 6y ago
These terms just mean different things. Very often, it's relatively easy to find a phenomenological model capable of performing quite good predictions. But, in order to find a physical model that can be broadly applied, we need to understand what is going on at a fundamental level. At least in my field (mechanical and materials engineering), understanding means explaining in basis to well established fundamental laws, a prediction is not enough.