From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments.
| Acknowledgements |
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xi | |
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xiii | |
| Introduction |
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1 | (10) |
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1 Thought Experiment and the Exercise of Imagination in Science |
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11 | (19) |
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2 Veridical Idealizations |
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30 | (23) |
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3 What Do We See in a Thought Experiment? |
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53 | (16) |
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4 The Body, Thought Experiments, and Phenomenology |
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69 | (21) |
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5 Thought Experiments from a Kantian Point of View |
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90 | (17) |
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6 Can Thought Experiments Be Resolved by Experiment? The Case of Aristotle's Wheel |
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107 | (16) |
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7 Chasing the Light: Einstein's Most Famous Thought Experiment |
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123 | (18) |
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8 At the Limits of Possibility: Thought Experiments in Quantum Gravity |
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141 | (19) |
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9 Craig Venter's New Life: The Realization of Some Thought Experiments in Biological Ontology |
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160 | (17) |
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10 Genealogical Thought Experiments in Economics |
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177 | (14) |
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11 Political Thought Experiments from Plato to Rawls |
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191 | (16) |
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12 Thought Experiment, Definition, and Literary Fiction |
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207 | (16) |
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13 Can Philosophical Thought Experiments Be `Screened'? |
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223 | (16) |
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14 Computational Modeling: Is This the End of Thought Experiments in Science? |
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239 | (22) |
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| Index |
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261 | |
Mélanie Frappier is Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Department of History of Science and Technology, University of Kings College, UK.
Letitia Meynell is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Gender and Womens Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada.
James Robert Brown is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada.
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