Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts

Katerina Ierodiakonou is Associate Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Athens. She has published extensively on ancient and Byzantine philosophy, especially in the areas of epistemology and logic. She currently works on a book about ancient theories of colour.Sophie Roux (Ph.D., EHESS, 1996) is Associate Professor at the University of Grenoble and Junior Fellow at the Institut universitaire de France. She has published extensively on various aspects of philosophy and science in the early modern period.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Emergence of the Notion of Thought Experiments, Sophie RouxPART ONE: HISTORICAL USES OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENTSRemarks on the History of an Ancient Thought Experiment, Katerina IerodiakonouThought Experiments in the De Anima Commentaries, Peter LautnerThought Experiments in Late Medieval Debates on Atomism, Christophe GrellardPART TWO: THE POSSIBILITY OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENTSThought Experiments and Indirect Proofs in Averroes, Aquinas, and Buridan, Simo Knuuttila and Taneli KukkonenGalileo’s Use of Medieval Thought Experiments, Carla Rita Palmerino On Kant’s Critique of Thought Experiments in Early Modern Philosophy, Stelios VirvidakisPART THREE: HOW DO THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS WORK?Philosophical Thought Experiments: In or Out of the Armchair?, Pascal EngelOn the Very Idea of a Thought Experiment, Jean-Yves Goffi and Sophie RouxThought Experiments and Mental Simulations, John ZeimbekisBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex nominum

“Thus, there is debate about the nature and status of the counterfactuality or modality of thought experiments and also of the epistemic implications of these various modalities. Moreover, there is disagreement about the purposes or function that thought experiments can be put to: can they, for instance, be used constructively to prove (or directly support) theories, or only destructively to weaken or disprove them? Finally, as the presence and fascination of many thought experiments show, their very concreteness seems to provide them with a compelling power to be taken seriously, whatever one may think about their modal and epistemic status. This, I think, is made perfectly clear by the range of contributions in the book, and perhaps its greatest virtue is that it reflects this disagreement in such a transparent way. However, its ambition, stated on the back cover, is very high: “to tame the contemporary wild usage of this notion”. While the book succeeds in making the multi-dimensionality of its topic clear, and by addressing many of its aspects in lucid and thought-provoking ways, I fear more is needed for realizing that ambition.” Øyvind Rabbås (University of Oslo), in Reviews in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 2/2013.“This significant collection, should stimulate a great deal more work on the wonderfully rich topic of TEs.”James Robert Brown and Michael T. Stuart in: HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 154-157"All in all, this collection presents us with nine thought-provoking essays on thought experimentation and other argumentative strategies from antiquity to today.A good reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy and science and the methodology of thought experimentation in either discipline." Daniel Cohnitz, Metascience (DOI 10.1007/s11016-012-9709-7)"The papers in the book concentrate on historical and methodological issues of thought experiments providing a range of analyses and thus clarifying a concept that has been hard to pin down...[this book] will provide a useful prism through which to assess agent-based modelling." Corinna Elsenbroich, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Volume 15, Number 1, 2012.