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Thought Experiments in Ancient Greece

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The Demons of Science
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Abstract

Image an ancient Greek who is exercised by questions of cosmic import: Is the universe finite or infinite? Is the Earth spherical or flat? Is the Earth the centre of the universe or does it rotate around a different hub, say the sun?

It is not so much the particular form that scientific theories have now taken – the conclusions which we believe we have proved – as the movement of thought behind them that concerns the philosopher.

Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1932: 353)

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Correspondence to Friedel Weinert .

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Weinert, F. (2016). Thought Experiments in Ancient Greece. In: The Demons of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31708-3_2

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