A thought experiment is an experiment that takes place in people's minds instead of in a laboratory or in the real world.
This article may not have a worldwide view of the subject. |
In a real-life experiment, people can see and measure changes, but thought experiments only show special ways of thinking. Anyone can do a thought experiment.
The usual goal of a thought experiment is to show what might happen: if this were true, what would follow from it?
The history of science has many thought experiments in it. Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the German term Gedankenexperiment (means 'thought experiment') in about 1812.
Posing hypothetical questions had been done for long time (by scientists and philosophers). However, people had no way of talking about it.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Thought experiment, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.