The Emergence of the Notion of Thought Experiments
Résumé
The purpose of this introduction is not to answer each of the questions that may have been asked these past twenty years. Most of these questions are touched upon or even answered in the contributions of this volume. Instead, it is to raise the curiosity of readers by asking them to step back from the trivial use of thought experiments that has now become the rule. The essays gathered in this book are not concerned with contemporary scientific thought experiments. However, it is in contemporary science that the notion of thought experiments was first developed; nowadays, scientific thought experiments are supposed to work, and thus to constitute the standard according to which thought experiments in other domains are judged. That is the reason why I shall begin by exploring the texts in which the origins of the scientific notion of thought experiments are usually said to be found. My general claim is simple: the emergence of the notion of thought experiments relies on a succession of misunderstandings and omissions. I shall then examine, in a more systematic perspective, the three characteristics of the broad category of thought experiments nowadays in circulation: thought experiments are counterfactual, they involve a concrete scenario and they have a well-delimited cognitive intention. My aim in exploring these characteristics is twofold. Firstly, it is to show that each of these characteristics, considered individually, may be taken in a more or less strict sense, and consequently to explain the proliferation of thought experiments. Secondly, it is to suggest that the recent debates on thought experiments might have arisen because these three characteristics are not easily conciliated when they are considered together. Finally, in a third and last section, the nine essays of this book will be presented.
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