ABSTRACT
It is simply convenience and economy of effort that leads to thought experimentation. Accordingly, thought experimentation involves five stages overall: supposition, context-specification, conclusion-deriving, lesson drawing, and synoptic reasoning. And at each of these stages a mishap or malfunction can in theory arise. But all of these different ways of simulating reality by use of artifacts afford ways of thought experimentation exactly because this chapter deals with a symbolically thought-controlled surrogate for reality. The cogency of thought experimentation is contextual but not subjective— it depends on the available information but not on the personal attitudes or inclinations of the experimenters. One recent author on thought experimentation characterizes the process as one of "armchair inquiry". Again, Charles Darwin gave thought experimentation a prominent place in his overall reasoning: Just as natural science has no monopoly on experimentation proper-which can, of course, be conducted in such everyday affairs as cookery or instructional management—so it has no monopoly on though experimentation either.
