Some ecologists like to argue that understanding of mechanism is not feasible yet in complex biological systems and therefore should not be pursued. Their argument would be less hollow if one could find a celebrated success in science that did not involve insight into mechanism. To the contrary, Darwin is a giant because he injected mechanism into evolution, and molecular biology advances rapidly because it ferrets mechanism. Political science is not science. By my strict definition, parts of ecology and oceanography are not science.
Economists are pretty good at post hoc explanations of what happened.
Statistical regularity is a great source of inspiration for generating hypotheses about mechanism, but don't mistake statistical regularity for an understanding of mechanism. Beware of vapid prediction that when distilled says no more than that I will see again what I saw before. References Box, G.E.P. 1976. Science and statistics. Kuhn, T.S. 1970.