The evidential significance of thought experiment in science

Abstract

The most promising way to regard thought experiment is as a species of experiment, alongside concrete experiment. Of the authors who take this view, many portray thought experiment as possessing evidential significance intrinsically. In contrast, concrete experiment is nowadays most convincingly portrayed as acquiring evidential significance in a particular area of science at a particular time in consequence of the persuasive efforts of scientists. I argue that the claim that thought experiment possesses evidential significance intrinsically is contradicted by the history of science. Thought experiment, like concrete experiment, has evidential significance only where particular assumptions-such as the Galilean doctrine of phenomena-are taken to hold; under alternative premises, in themselves equally defensible, thought experiment is evidentially inert. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.

Mechanics Lost: Husserl’s Galileo and Ihde’s Telescope

“…Two examples from Galilean mechanics will help to show that, while the analysis in the Crisis may rightly be considered selective, Husserl nevertheless succeeds in identifying a methodological trait in Galileo's approach that had a significant impact on the subsequent development of modern science. Before coming to my first example, however, some stage-setting is necessary (cf., for the following, Koertge 1977;McAllister 1996).…”

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“…While Brown and Szabó Gendler are considerably more optimistic than I on the epistemic power of thought experiments, my cosymposiast James McAllister (1996) has developed an unwarranted pessimism. He observes correctly that thought experiments can only have persuasive power if they play by the right epistemic rules.…”

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“…Practitioners of the law-formulating approach redefined the term to denote a trial that differed from everyday experience in two respects: the contrived circumstances of its occurrence and the convention that its outcome may be reported selectively. Where even experiments failed to support laws of nature, advocates of the law-formulating approach turned to sources of justification still further removed from everyday experience: Galileo claimed that laws of mechanics could be established by thought experiment (McAllister, 1996), while Descartes argued that the attributes of God assured us of the truth of his laws of optics.…”