Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy

Tamara Horowitz is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Gerald Massey is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh

...this book is full of interesting ideas presented with liveliness and experise. It is worth study by all who are concerned with TEs. -- James Cargile, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

• Part 1 Thought experiments in the history of science and philosophy: thought experimentation in presocratic philosophy, Nicholas Rescher; mediaeval thought-experiments - the matemethodology of mediaeval science, Peter King; Descartes, conceivability and logical modality, Lilli Alanen. Part 2 Thought experiments in logic and mathematics: thought experiments and conceivability conditions, D.A. Anapolitanos; do all rational folk reason as we do? Frege's thought experiment reconsidered. Part 3 Thought experiments in the sciences: can thought experiments fail?, Allen I. Janis; thought experiments - a Platonic account, James Robert Brown; thought experiments in Einstein's work, John Norton; on the nature of though experiments in scientific reasoning, Andrew D. Irvine; thought experiments of Steven Mach and Gouy - thought experiments as ideal limits and as semantic domains, Ronald Laymon; reflections on strings, Mark Wilson; though experiments in the philosophy of physical science, Jorge Forge; Darwinian thought experiments - a function for just-so stories, James G. Lennox; thought experiments in linuistics, Sarah G. Thomason; method of imaginative variation in phenomenology, J.N. Mohanty; the tradition of thought experiments in epistemology, Rolf George; backdoor analyicity, Gerald Massey; on some pernicious thought-experiments, Richard M. Gale; Newcomb's problem as thought experiment, Tamara Horowitz; conceivability and modal knowledge, Stephen Cade Hetherington; the ballad of Clyde the moose, Joseph L. Camp, Jr.