ABSTRACT
Hans-Christian Orsted introduced the term "thought experiment" to philosophy in 1811, although it did not get much philosophical attention until the 1980s. Thought experiments are equally common in science, some famous examples include Maxwell's demon, Einstein's elevator, Schrodinger's cat, Newton's bucket, Heisenberg's microscope, Galileo's falling bodies, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and Stevin's chain draped over a prism. While philosophical and scientific thought experiments have stolen most of the scholarly spotlight, the scope of thought experiments grows substantially when we recognize the many works of art that we can fruitfully characterize as thought experiments. Besides humanistic, scientific and artistic pursuits, thought experiments are deeply important for ordinary life. Thought experiments form an extremely diverse set of mental activities. In this book, Alisa Bokulich and Melanie Frappier critically appraise various definitions of thought experiments to see if anything definite can be said.
