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Thought Experiments

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

Overview

Thought experiments – like Schrödinger’s cat and the trolley problem – are a way for inquirers to focus the power of the imagination. What makes a thought experiment different from fantasies and daydreams is that they aim to produce new knowledge, wisdom, understanding, illumination, or something like that. They typically also have a narrative structure, with a beginning, middle, and end. Usually there are several phases in a thought experiment: one in which we set up some imaginary scenario, another in which we “see” what happens in that scenario, and, finally, one in which we draw some conclusions. At this level of description, thought experiments are like laboratory experiments, except they are carried out in the imagination.

This entry will consider what thought experiments are, who performs them, how they have been investigated, what they aim to do, how they work, and how they connect to the possible.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Similar notions (under different names) were in circulation before Ørsted. For example, we find some of these in the work of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Novalis, and Immanuel Kant (see Schildknecht 1990; Daiber 2001; Fehige and Stuart 2014).

  2. 2.

    Did all of these people really conduct thought experiments? As James McAllister (2018) argues, the term “thought experiment” includes the modern Western concept of scientific experiment, which arguably did not exist before Galileo. When it is legitimate to attribute a thought experiment to a historical figure? This is an open question.

  3. 3.

    Gendler’s definition takes elements from John D. Norton's earlier definition (see Norton 1991, 129).

  4. 4.

    According to Plutarch, Theseus returned to Athens on a ship. This famous ship became a tourist attraction, and had its planks replaced, one by one, as they decayed. The question is, if all the parts are replaced with new ones, is this still Theseus’s ship? If not, at what point does it cease to be the same ship? This thought experiment has developed over time, and there are now many more elaborate versions.

  5. 5.

    Something like this distinction was first made by Hans Radder (1996) when discussing laboratory experiments. It was then applied to thought experiments by Sören Häggqvist (1996) and Tim De Mey (2003).

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    Michael T. Stuart

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Stuart, M.T. (2020). Thought Experiments. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_59-1

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