Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-06T22:46:11.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Counter Thought Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Extract

Let's begin with an old example. In De Rerum Naturua, Lucretius presented a thought experiment to show that space is infinite. We imagine ourselves near the alleged edge of space; we throw a spear; we see it either sail through the ‘edge’ or we see it bounce back. In the former case the ‘edge’ isn't the edge, after all. In the latter case, there must be something beyond the ‘edge’ that repelled the spear. Either way, the ‘edge’ isn't really an edge of space, after all. So space is infinite.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brown, J.R. (1986) ‘Thought Experiments Since the Scientific Revolution’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol I, no 1. 1986.Google Scholar
Brown, J.R. (1991) Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, J.R. (1999) Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to the World of Proofs and Pictures, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, J.R. (2003a) ‘Peeking Into Plato's Heaven’, Philosophy of Science, vol. 71, 11261138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained, New York: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. (2005) Sweet Dreams, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galileo, (Dialogo), Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Trans from the Dialogo by Drake, S.), second revised edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galileo, (Discoursi), Two New Sciences, (Trans from the Discoursi by Drake, S.) Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Geach, P. (1969) God and the Soul, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Horowitz, T. and Massey, G. (eds.) (1991) Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, Savage MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Jackson, F. (1982) ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 127, 127136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, T. (1964) ‘A Function for Thought Experiments’, reprinted in Kuhn, The Essential Tension, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. (1956) The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Alexander, H. G. (ed.) Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Lennox, James G. (1991). ‘Darwinian Thought Experiments: A Function for Just-So Stories’, in Horowitz and Massey (1991), 223245.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1983. Postscript to ‘Mad Pain and Martian Pain’. In his Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, 130–32.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1988. ‘What Experience Teaches’. In Proceedings of the Russellian Society. Sydney: University of Sydney, 1988. Reprinted in Mind and Cognition, W. Lycan (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, 499–518.Google Scholar
Lucretius, , De Rerum Natura, Cambridge, Ma, Loeb Library.Google Scholar
Mach, E. (1960) The Science of Mechanics, (Trans by McCormack, J.), sixth edition, LaSalle Illinois: Open Court.Google Scholar
Mach, E. (1976) ‘On Thought Experiments’, in Knowledge and Error, Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton, I. (Principia) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy Cajori, F. (trans.), Berkeley: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
Norton, J. (1991) ‘Thought Experiments in Einstein's Work’, in Horowitz and Massey (1991).Google Scholar
Norton, J. (1996) ‘Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought?’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1969) Science and Hypothesis, New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1980) ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 417424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, L. (1976) Space, Time, and Spacetime, Berkeley, University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, J.J. (1971) ‘A Defense of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1w1 (Fall): 4766.Google Scholar