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Do Thought Experiments have a Life of Their Own? Comments on James Brown, Nancy Nersessian and David Gooding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

I believe that thought experiments do not have a life of their own. The tide of opinion is going the other way. That is evident from the ample citations provided by our three speakers. They include for example the outstanding collection ofpapers, edited by Tamara Horowitz and Gerald Massey (1991) with its wonderful editorial introduction that really does say what is in each paper. There are David Gooding's chapters (1990, chs. 8-10) on the relationships between Faraday's thought experiments and real experiments. There is James Brown's book (1991).

Type
Part IX. Thought Experiments: The Theoretician's Laboratory
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1992 , 1993 , pp. 302 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

Brown, J. R. (1991), The Laboratory of the Mind : Thought Experiments in Natural Science. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
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