The first argues that thought experiments in philosophy and science can be treated together. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Experiments, our psychology and our selves, philosophical papers, 35. Context and thought experiments in science learning. On the hidden thought experiments of economic theory.
Thought experiments are a natural part of human cognition. The evidential significance of thought experiment in science. A great deal of papers and books published on thought experiments since 1991 in. Why monte carlo simulations are inferences and not experiments, international studies in the philosophy of science, 26. I began this paper by pointing out the convincing nature of galileos. Thought experiments cooper 2005 metaphilosophy wiley. We set up some situation, we observe what happens, then we try to draw appropriate conclusions. Thought experiments lancaster eprints lancaster university. Discussing philosophys ability to clarify our thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to. Nov 26, 2016 the paper addresses the question of the nature and limits of philosophical thought experiments. In particular, it is still unclear whether the judgments elicited by thought experiments can provide evidence for the premises of philosophical arguments.
Naomi picked it up and couldnt help but notice the small white rabbits foot dangling fromit. Johann witthansen established that hans christian orsted was the first to use the german term gedankenexperiment lit. Thought experiments are performed in the imagination. We ask that if you quote from our papers, you cite the final, published version when possible and use the wording as formulated there. Philosophy of science can be divided into four important sections which are the concept of philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, science and pseudoscience, as well as the scientific method and well known philosophers and scientists. After this, i will return to thought experiments in the sciences and propose an account of how they work. Stuart doctor of philosophy institute for the history and philosophy of science and technology university of toronto 2015 abstract thought experiments are a means of imaginative reasoning with an employment record longer than two and a half thousand years. Thought experiments in science and philosophy philsciarchive. International studies in the philosophy of science, 11, 115. It seems difficult to accept such a categorical separation of science and philosophy.
As james brown has argued, thought experiments can help us learn new things about nature. Discussing philosophy s ability to clarify our thoughts, he explains why such clarification depends on the development of philosophical theories, and how those theories can be tested by imaginative thought experiments, and compared against each other by standards similar to those used in the natural and social sciences. I am a philosopher with a background in art which i studied as an undergraduate. Thought experiments are supposed to display somehow the force of the imagination in philosophical and scientific thinking. In mathematics there is something analogous to thought experiments visual reasoning and picture proofs. In this way, thought experiments resemble real experiments, except that they are experiments in the mind. But the emphasis is on variety, rather than quantity. More than 100 classic and contemporary thought experiments, excerpted from their original sources, including putnams brain in a vat, the liar paradox, zenos. Collected thought experiments in philosophy is a brief collection of over 100 classic and contemporary thought experiments, each exploring an important philosophical argument. These two objections, however, may be thought to target the use of thought experiments in subdisciplines of philosophy such as political theory and moral theory where thought experiments are deployed not only for conceptual and logical purposes, but also for. There is general agreement that thought experimenting has played an important role in the creation of modern science. Thought experiments in science, philosophy and the arts pp. Their structure and function1 lukas bielik department of logic and methodology of sciences faculty of philosophy comenius university in bratislava project apvv 014912 1.
The terms thought experiment, imaginary experiment. The ancient greek deiknymi, or thought experiment, was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof, and existed before euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thoughtexperiment perhaps the key experiment in the history of modern science is galileos demonstration that falling objects must. Scientific thought experiments especially those in physicsare the clear cases, so my primary goal is to establish true and interesting generalizations about them. For each group, a small and fragmented literature has discussed some aspects of the arguments presented here. The university of chicago press on behalf of the philosophy of science association. Thought experiments are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.
The present theories in science must be agreed with the previous theories. Pdf it is well established that thought experiments are both scientifically and. Influential instances of thought experimenting include newtons bucket, maxwells demon, einsteins elevator and schrodingers cat. Kuhn in his paper a function of thought experiments see kuhn.
It will consider general problems of principle concerning thought experiments as well as the place and function of exemplar thought experiments largely drawn from physical sciences, but from philosophy and mathematics, as well. In philosophy of science, authors have argued that the extant science textbooks give inadequate analyses of scientific methods martin 1976. International studies in the philosophy of science, 1996, european journal for philosophy of science, 2009, philosophy plus science, 2018. Introduction to thought experiments in science and philosophy. Thought experiments in science, philosophy, and the arts routledge studies in the philosophy of science brown, james robert on. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read thought experiments. Can two thinkers perform the same thought experiment, and yet reach different conclusions. The number of papers, anthologies, and monographs has been. I will look briefly at this class of thought experiments and try using them to make a case for possibly settling the continuum hypothesis. Is this really the case, and if so, why might that be. These papers were either written for the conference, or were written after it by commentators and other. Department of philosophy and religious studies, concordia. Pdf doing philosophy download full pdf book download. The thought experiment that bernard williams mentioned in his work a critique of utilitarianism to establish that utilitarianism is an incoherent and unintelligible theory of morality and does not hold much ground, especially when it comes to decision making under pressure and in high risk situations.
While thought experiments play an important role in contemporary analytic philosophy, much remains unclear about thought experiments. Studies in history and philosophy of modern physics, 19952001, 2003. Thought experiments routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. Galileo and the indispensability of scientific thought. The first argues that thought experiments in philosophy and science should be treated together. However, implications for pedagogy are generally neglected. This paper tries to do for thought what some of the other papers do for language. Thought experiments play a vital role in scientific argumentation. They are used for diverse reasons in a variety of areas, including economics, history, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences, especially physics. Think of gettierstyle cases when you read this thought experiment. This article seeks to explain how thought experiments work, and also the reasons why they can fail. Philosophy of science takes science and subjects it to critical thought. An inexpensive tour of the entire universe ebook written by sundar vedantham. There is a special abundance of examples from ethics and the metaphysics of personal identity because thought experiments in these areas have recently attracted heavy commentary.
By carefully examining one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of sciencethat by which galileo is said to have refuted the aristotelian theory that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter onesi attempt to show that thought experiments play a distinctive role in scientific inquiry. It is often not possible to do these experiments in real life, but by doing them in our heads we can learn something new about the nature of reality, about right and wrong, the existence of god and many other topics. Thought experiments in the history of philosophy of science. Gedankenexperiment, gedankenexperiment, or gedankenerfahrung considers a hypothesis, theory, or principle for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. Success here will radiate to my secondary goal of understanding philosophical thought experiments. We engage in a thought experiment when we watch the super bowl and try to imagine what the winning players will do during the locker room celebration or when we try to imagine how well go about telling our spouse that we spent more money than the budget allows on a new computer. The paper addresses the question of the nature and limits of philosophical thought experiments.
Studies in the philosophy of science 6 1992, 215226. The philosophy of science is a field that deals with what science is, how it works, and the logic through which we build scientific knowledge. Now part of the fun of science, as in most interesting human activities, lies in thinking about how and why it is done, and how it might be done better. My aim in this paper is to argue that thought experi. Philosophy without thought experiments seems unthinkable see e. Thought experiments in science, philosophy, and the arts.
These papers were either written for the conference, or were written after it by commentators and other participants. In this article, a galilean thought experiment is used to enhance learning in a collegelevel physical science course. Philosophers use thought experiments, short stories that bring out intuitions. An introduction through thought experiments, authortheodore schick and lewis vaughn, year1998. Thought experiments philosophy oxford bibliographies. These thought experiments introduce students to the kind of disciplined thought required in philosophy, and awaken their intellectual curiosity. Philosophers who view all hypothetical reasoning as a form of thought experimentation regard the method as being as old as philosophy itself.
The paper s intended audiences are both philosophers of science and practicing scientists. Others maintain that truly informative thought experiments are found only in mathematics and the natural sciences. The second examines existing accounts of thought experiments and shows why they are inadequate. As a final project, students explore galileos thought experiment in the. In this essay, i show that many interpretations of galileos thought.
The idea behind this conference was to encourage philosophers and scientists to talk to each other about the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines. Both modern and historical perspectives of galileos work are presented. The philosophy and science during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century the developments in philosophy and science in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries not only challenged the authority of religion, for the catholic and protestant faith, it also brought about unexpected changes in the methods used for reasoning. Why, what and how till gruneyanoff royal institute of technology kth, stockholm finnish centre of excellence in the philosophy of the social sciences, helsinki tint forthcoming in european journal for philosophy of science. Many philosophers agree that thought experiments play an important role in analytic philosophy at least. Pdf introduction to thought experiments in science and. Scientific thought experimentsespecially those in physicsare the clear cases, so my primary goal is to establish true and interesting generalizations about them. James robert brown, thought experiments in science.
It is the application of philosophical methods to philosophical problems as they arise in the context of the sciences. Introduction1 section 1 thought experiments in the history of science and philosophy. Intuitions, remember, are nonsensory perceptions of abstract entities. Thought experiments in science and philosophy philsci. Looking at the development of the discussion about thought experiments over the past thirty years, it is fair to say that thought experiments were primarily an important topic in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of philosophy metaphilosophy, before the scope widened up at a later point.
Since my aim is synoptic, a wide corpus of thought experiments has been incorporated. They take the form of more informal bits of reasoning that precede the presentation of the formal, mathematical models these papers are known for. Contents click on titles for links to individual pdfs preface. On the one hand, experimental philosophers are right to claim that we need much more laboratory work in order to have more reliable thought experiments, but on the other hand a naturalism that is too radical is incapable of clarifying the peculiarity of thought experiments in philosophy. This volume originated in a conference on the place of thought experiments in science and philosophy which was organized by us and held at the center for philosophy of science at the university of pittsburgh, april 1820, 1986. Sorensen that thought experiments in science and philosophy are of a kind. Thought experiments at least in some cases allow us to intuit laws of nature. Pdf galileos philosophy of science semantic scholar.
Philosophy offers numerous examples of thought experiments that play a role. Christopher hitchcock what is the philosophy of science. These thought experiments differ from the formal models in various ways. Thought experiments in the classroom educational leadership. Many positivists used thought experiments and were interested in the methodology of science, yet they appear to be relatively silent on the topic. More than 100 classic and contemporary thought experiments, excerpted from their original sources, including putnams brain in a vat, the liar paradox, zenos achilles, taylors ingenious physiologist, pales watch. In this way, philosophy is the discipline that studies the. A year later, roy sorensen published his thought experiments, a detailed tenchapter discus sion of thought experiments in philosophy and science, in which he defends their con tinuity with physical experiment, and adduces numerous arguments in favor of. Examplesofthoughtexperiments inscience andphilosophy. Most papers in theoretical economics contain thought experiments. Because they do not involve the senses, they transcend experience, and give us a priori knowledge of the laws of nature.
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