ABSTRACT
The explanatory use of thought experimentations was used by Thales of Miletus, the first of the Pre-Socratic nature philosophers. One of the most common uses of explanatory thought experiments proceeds by way of analogy. Aristotle attributes to Anaximander a line of reasoning which derives a patently false conclusion from the hypothetical assumption of the thesis whose falsity is to be established— a mode of pursuing that clearly proceeds by way of a thought experiment. Xenophanes of Colophon resorted to the explanatory use of thought experiments: He thinks that a mixing of the earth with the sea is going on, and that in time the earth is dissolved by the liquid. Of all the Presocratics, it was Heraclitus of Ephesus to who thought experimentation came the most naturally. In his thought, the projection of "strange" suppositions is a prominent precept of method: If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not make discoveries, for it resists discovery and is paradoxical.
