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About Thought Experiment

Abolfazl Soltani

Published Sep 13, 2021• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In physics, whenever we cannot do an experiment for physical, technological, financial or ethical reasons, we use "thought experiment". In this letter we will prove that a thought experiment leads us only to possible results of an experiment not decisive result. To achieve a definitive results, an experiment must be done in the real world.

DOI
10.33774/coe-2021-d6cpp

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Kluwer Academic Publishers eBooks•Jan 14, 2006•16 citations
In physics, whenever we cannot do an experiment for physical, technological, financial or ethical reasons, we use "thought experiment". In this letter we will prove that a thought experiment leads us only to possible results of an experiment not decisive result. To achieve a definitive results, an experiment must be done in the real world.
My theme is thought experiment in natural science, and its relation to real experiment. I shall defend the thesis that thought experiments that do not lead to theorizing and to a real experiment are generally of much less value that those that do so. To illustrate this thesis I refer to three examples, from three very different periods, and with three very different kinds of status. The first is the classic thought experiment in which Galileo imagined that he had, by pure thought, demolished Aristoteles' dogma that heavier bodies fall more quickly than light ones. I will show that he was mistaken. The second is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper purporting to show that quantum mechanics must be incomplete in its domain of application. This thought experiment is a very good one, not because its conclusions are correct, but precisely because it was fruitful, leading to theory and, above all, to a real experiment. Finally I discuss the modern string theory of everything, which, while it is regarded as a physical theory by its instigators, shares some properties of the least successful sort of thought experiment.