The Basic Idea
Have you ever been sitting around a campfire, when your friend proposes an outlandish, open-ended question? Perhaps they ask you something simple, like what you would do with a billion dollars, or what animal you would want to be if you could shapeshift. Sometimes, however, you might accidentally create a profound hypothetical question, which doesn’t appear to have an easy answer. If so, you may have stumbled upon a thought experiment.
Thought experiments are defined as the mental process of using hypotheticals to logically reason out a solution to a difficult question. As the name suggests, thought experiments often try to simulate the experimental process through imagination alone. We use thought experiments when actually performing said experiment would be ethically, physically, or financially impossible. Typically, thought experiments end up being circular and rhetorical, as they are designed to emphasize a point, rather than fully answer a question. Thought experiments are used across disciplines, but most often used in the realms of philosophy or theoretical sciences.1
Strap a piece of toast -buttered side up- to the back of a cat. Throw the cat out of the window. Will the cat land on its feet or will Murphy’s law apply?
– Alan Fletcher
