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Gedankenexperiment (view source)
Revision as of 15:24, September 15, 2016
, 15:24, September 15, 2016expand
'''Gedankenexperiment''' or '''thought experiment''' is a scientific device of imagination used to investigate the nature of things.<ref>{{cite web |title=Thought Experiments|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|date=Jul 29, 2011|accessdate=Mar 03, 2013|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/}}</ref>
'''Gedankenexperiment''' or '''thought experiment''' is a scientific device of imagination used to investigate the nature of things.<ref>{{cite web |title=Thought Experiments|publisher=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|date=Jul 29, 2011|accessdate=Mar 03, 2013|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/}}</ref>
In many cases, in order to design a scientific experiment, the investigator will think through the experiment and consider possible results or outcomes. If the only outcome is obvious, there is no need to perform that experiment, and it can be redesigned to better test the investigator's hypothesis. In some fields, such as theoretical physics, thought experiments are impossible to perform as actual experiments. For example, when Einstein asked what would happen if someone could chase a light wave, he developed the theory of special relativity, which was later verified by other physical measurements.
== Thought Experiments in Ethics ==
== Thought Experiments in Ethics ==