ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about mental imagery or the related concept of mental modelling. It examines the case for an important interaction between images and thought experiments (TEs) that rests on their crucially sharing a certain imaginative character, understood through Walton's theory of representation. Whether one can identify the TE as the imagining itself or as the text that produces the imagining, it must be recognized that text because of its form can be better or worse at conveying what is to be imagined. Pictures are often used in concert with the text of TEs, particularly in the physical sciences, because they can more efficiently and effectively evoke certain types of imagining. The chapter presents a few remarks comparing the ways in which visual images and texts present their content with a view to identifying when images are likely to be particularly important or useful for certain types of thought experimentation.
