Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 10:14:31 PM
A thought experiment is an experiment conducted without physical equipment other than the mind. It is not totally abstract, as it relies on life's experiences to extrapolate and understand new knowledge.
Perhaps the greatest practitioner of thought experimentation was Albert Einstein. When he first published his theories, he lacked the technology and the financial backing to conduct any kind of experiment but thought experiments, and yet today he is recognized as the greatest physicist who ever lived. The reality is that even after he became famous, in the first decade of the last century, he continued to do thought experiments.
Stephen Hawking is a practitioner.
Thought experimentation is a legitimate way to examine a problem.
For me, it is extremely handy as I can use thought experimentation to illustrate and make understandable complex aspects of judicial and legal ethics issues without the danger of anyone trying to claim (successfully) that I had libeled them.