"Data without theory is blind and theory without data is empty." Comment. (Answer in 150 words)

- "Data without theory is blind and theory without data is empty." Comment. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The epigram echoes Kant's pairing of empty thoughts and blind intuitions. It is right as a warning and misleading as a symmetry.

Body

1. Why data without theory is blind: No fact selects itself. Theory decides what counts as a variable and what a correlation means; without it findings accumulate without a problem. This is what Mills called abstracted empiricism: accomplished survey work answering no question worth asking.
2. Why theory without data is empty: A theory unexposed to evidence cannot be corrected, only elaborated. Mills's other target, grand theory, was Parsons's conceptual architecture, too abstract to be shown wrong anywhere.
3. Whether the two are really dependent: Yes, but asymmetrically. Observation is already theory-laden, so pure data never existed; Glaser and Strauss's grounded theory, by contrast, generates theory out of data instead of preceding it.
4. A verdict: The claim holds as a description of the cycle of enquiry, and Merton's theories of the middle range are its working settlement.

Conclusion
Blindness and emptiness are not equal dangers but two points on one circuit research must keep closed.