Scientific models and thought experiments

Abstract

The philosophical literature on models and thought experiments has been developing exponentially and independently for decades. This independence is surprising, given how similar models and thought experiments are. They each have “lives of their own”—they sit between theory and experience, are important for both pedagogy and cutting-edge science, galvanize conceptual changes and paradigm shifts, and involve considering imaginary scenarios and working out what happens. Recently, philosophers have begun to highlight these similarities. This entry aims at taking the idea further, by trying to systematically identify places where insights from one body of literature can be taken up in the other. Important differences will also be highlighted along the way.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.