Intervention and experiment

The received view of scientific experimentation holds that science is characterized by experiment and experiment is characterized by active intervention on the system of interest. Although versions of this view are widely held, they have seldom been explicitly defended. The present essay reconstructs and defuses two arguments in defense of the received view: first, that intervention is necessary for uncovering causal structures, and second, that intervention conduces to better evidence. By examining a range of non-interventionist studies from across the sciences, I conclude that interventionist experiments are not, ceteris paribus, epistemically superior to non-interventionist studies and that the latter may thus be classified as experiment proper. My analysis explains why intervention remains valuable while at the same time elevating the status of some non-interventionist studies to that of experiment proper.