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

• 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.

...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.