Systemic Intervention

Intervention is generally understood as purposeful action by an agent to create change.

Systemic Intervention is a term coined by Midgley (2000), who defines it as purposeful action by an agent to create change in relation to reflection upon boundaries.

According to Midgley, when scientists set up observations, they are actually conducting interventions because:

1. Systems principle of interconnectedness Suggests that all observers are either directly or indirectly linked with what they observe (von Bertalanffy 1968). In other words, there can be no such thing as truly independent observation, even though scientists use methods to minimise their influence on what they observe.
2. Observers make decisions about what to observe. Scientists can choose what to study, depending on their values (Ulrich 1983, Midgley 2000, Alrøe 2000).
3. Observers select concepts to guide observation. The same scientific observer may observe in a very different manner depending on whether she chooses, for example, reductionist scientific concepts or systems concepts (Midgley 2001b, 2004).
4. The interpretation of sense data is integral to observation (Maturana 1988, Maturana and Varela 1992). It is not credible to claim that scientifically controlled observation is identical for all people simply because it is a biological process: the empirical evidence tells us something quite different. For instance, under conditions of ambiguity, cultural expectations influence what different people see when presented with the same visual material (e.g., Bagby 1957), and there is evidence of interpretation going on even during simple acts of visual perception (e.g., Ullman 1980, Rock 1983). Of course, we should be clear that this is not a solipsist position (which says there is no relationship at all between the cognitive construction of observations and an external world, which may not even exist): sense data seems to reflect some of the external world, and is essential for perception (Gibson 1979, Neisser 2014, Rogers 2017), but elements of interpretation are still integral to that perception.
5. Observations are related to meanings that are generated by communities of practice (Popper 1959). Scientists don’t conduct their observations in a vacuum: they conduct them in order to make a meaningful contribution to a scientific debate. Therefore, their observations will be constructed in ways that will support them in making a difference in the debates in which they are engaged.

(Source: Midgley & Rajagopalan, 2020); For more detailed arguments can be found in Midgley 2000, 2001b, 2003a, 2004, 2008a)

References

• Midgley G (2000) Systemic intervention: Philosophy, methodology, and practice. Kluwer/Plenum, New York