THE EVIDENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IN SCIENCE

The most promising way to regard thought experiment is as a species of experiment, alongside concrete experiment. Of the authors who take th is view, many portray thought experiment as possessing evidential sign ificance intrinsically. In contrast, concrete experiment is nowadays m ost convincingly portrayed as acquiring evidential significance in a p articular area of science at a particular time in consequence of the p ersuasive efforts of scientists. I argue that the claim that thought e xperiment possesses evidential significance intrinsically is contradic ted by the history of science. Thought experiment, like concrete exper iment, has evidential significance only where particular assumptions-s uch as the Galilean doctrine of phenomena-are taken to hold; under alt ernative premises, in themselves equally defensible, thought experimen t is evidentially inert. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.