Abstract
Thought experiments (henceforth, “TE’s”) in science take the form of short narratives in which various experimental procedures are described. The competent reader understands that these procedures have not been, and usually could not (for some appropriate modality) be, enacted. She is invited, however, to imagine or make believe that these procedures are enacted and to conclude that certain consequences would ensue, where this is taken to bear upon a more general question which is the topic of the TE. Perhaps the most famous example of such a device is Galileo’s “Tower” TE which aimed both to refute the standing Aristotelean account of the behavior of falling bodies, and to establish the alternative account favored by Galileo himself. The Aristotelean account held that the speed at which a body falls is directly proportional to its weight. Galileo asks us to imagine that we take two bodies, one heavy [H] and one light [L], to the top of a high tower. We strap the bodies together and drop the resulting object [H+L] from the tower. The Aristotelean is then committed to two contradictory claims. First, since [H+L] is heavier than [H], it should fall faster than H. On the other hand, since [L] falls more slowly than [H] it should retard the fall of [H], and since [H] falls more quickly than [L] it should accelerate the fall of [L]. So [H+L] should fall at a speed somewhere between the rate of fall of [H] and the rate of fall of [L]. Since the Aristotelean view leads to an absurdity—that [H+L] will fall both more quickly and more slowly than [H]-rate of fall must be independent of weight. Given this “intermediate” conclusion, Galileo further concludes that (if we remove the resistance of a medium) all bodies fall at the same rate.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
- 2.
For a detailed discussion of philosophical thought experiments, see Häggqvist (1996).
- 3.
For a critical overview of the literature on the nature of fiction and a defense of these two conditions, see my (2005, 2007a, Chapter 3).
- 4.
- 5.
This allows not merely for fictions that are accidentally true, but also for fictions that the author knows or believes to be true, as long as their being true is not what guides the author’s constructive activity. See my (2005).
- 6.
Nersessian (1993, 297) argues that TE’s in science differ from the narratives in literary fictions in that “unlike the fictional narrative, … the context of the scientific thought experiment makes the intention clear to the reader that the situation is one that is to represent a potential real-world situation”, one in which “objects behave as they would in the real world” (1993, 295) if the hypothesized circumstances were to obtain. In my (2007b), I argue that literary fictions also standardly satisfy these conditions, and thus that no such principled distinction can be drawn.
- 7.
- 8.
For a fuller discussion of these matters, see my (2007b).
- 9.
- 10.
This is argued in Nussbaum (1985).
- 11.
- 12.
Stolnitz also charges that the “profound truths” supposedly obtainable from reading literary works are, once we succeed in spelling them out, banal, and that the “truths” supposedly embedded in different fictions may contradict one another without any established method for resolving the conflict. I think, however, that these challenges are easily answered given the kind of response developed in section “IV” to the “no-evidence” and “no-argument” argument (for the latter, see below).
- 13.
This is not to subscribe to a discredited atomistic conception of theory assessment in science, according to which, in Quine’s famous metaphor, theories meet the tribunal of experience singly rather than collectively. But it is to insist that, even on the most holistic conception of science, bringing experimental or other empirical evidence to bear in the assessment of theories plays a central role, albeit a role that does not rule unequivocally on the status of a “tested” theory. I am grateful to Catherine Elgin for pointing out the need to clarify this point.
- 14.
I am grateful to Roman Frigg for raising this objection.
- 15.
It should be clear why neither of the deflationary responses to Kuhn’s “epistemological puzzle” can help us to defend literary cognitivism, since they are effectively arguments against a cognitivist view of scientific TE’s. But what of the “extreme inflationist” response? We can certainly envision a defense of literary cognitivism that parallels that response—think, for example, of the “Romantic” view of the literary artist, as one whose words transmit to others her intuitive insight into the inner nature of things. But extreme inflationism seems unpromising as a defense of the epistemic virtues of scientific TE’s, for it cannot prevail over moderate inflationism if the principal arguments offered in its favor are intended to show that it is preferable to some form of deflationism. And this indeed seems to be an objection to Brown’s form of extreme inflationism (1991, 1992), which is defended largely by pointing to aspects of the functioning of TE’s for which the moderate deflationist cannot provide a plausible account. Miscevic (1992) argues that the “mental modelling” account can explain all of these aspects of the functioning of TE’s. If Miscevic is right, the greater explanatory burden that must be shouldered by the extreme inflationist—who must tell a convincing story about our capacity to grasp relations between universals in our engagement with TE’s—tells in favor of the moderate position. I think analogous difficulties would plague an “extreme inflationist” defense of literary cognitivism.
- 16.
I am grateful to Catherine Elgin for raising this worry.
References
Arthur, R. (1999), “On Thought Experiments as a Priori Science”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13, 3: 215–229.
Brown, J. R. (1991), The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences. London: Routledge.
Brown, J. R. (1992), “Why Empiricism Won’t Work”, in PSA 1992, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 271–279.
Carroll, N. (2002), “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60, 1: 3–26.
Currie, G. (1990), The Nature of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davies, D. (2005), “Fiction”, in B. Gaut and D. Lopes (eds.), Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 347–358.
Davies, D. (2007a), Aesthetics and Literature. London: Continuum.
Davies, D. (2007b), “Thought Experiments and Fictional Narratives”, Croatian Journal of Philosophy VII, 19: 29–46.
Duhem, P. (1914), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P. Weiner. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press (1954).
Elgin, C. Z. (2007), “The Laboratory of the Mind”, in W. Huerner, J. Gibson, and L. Pocci (eds.), A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge. London: Routledge, 43-54.
Feyerabend, P. (1975), Against Method. London: New Left Books.
Gendler, T. (1998), “Galileo and the Indispensability of Thought Experiments”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49: 397–424.
Gooding, D. (1973), “What is Experimental about Thought Experiments?” in F. Hull and K. Okruhlik (eds.), (1993), in PSA 1992, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 280–290.
Goodman, N. (1976), Languages of Art, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Goodman, N. (1978), Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Häggqvist, S. (1996), Thought Experiments in Philosophy. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Hempel, C. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press.
Hull, D., Forbes, M. and Okruhlik, K. (eds.) (1993), in PSA 1992, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983), Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kivy, P. (1997), “The Laboratory of Fictional Truth”, in P. Kivy, Philosophies of Arts: An Essay in Differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 120–139.
Kuhn, T. (1964), “A Function for Thought Experiments”, reprinted in T. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (1977). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 240–265.
Lamarque, P. and Olsen, S. H. (1994), Truth, Fiction, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mach, E. (1905), “On Thought Experiments”, reprinted in E. Mach, Knowledge and Error (1975). Dordrecht: Reidel, 134–147.
McAllister, J. (1996), “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiments in Science”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27, 2: 233–250.
Miscevic, N. (1992), “Mental Models and Thought Experiments”, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 6, 3: 215–226.
Nersessian, N. (1993), “In the Theoretician’s Laboratory: Thought Experimenting as Mental Modeling”, in F. Hull and K. Okruhlik (eds.), in PSA 1992, vol. 2. East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association, 291–301.
Norton, J. (1996), “Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26, 3: 333–366.
Novitz, D. (1987), Knowledge, Fiction, and Imagination. Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1990), “Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Literature and the Moral Imagination”, in M. Nussbaum (ed.), Love’s Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 148–167.
Putnam, H. (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, in H. Putnam (ed.), Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 215–271.
Putnam, H. (1976), “Literature, Science, and Reflection”, in Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 83–94.
Searle, J. (1980), “Minds, Brains, and Programmes”, Behavioural and Brain Sciences III-3. Reprinted in D. Rosenthal (ed.), The Nature of Mind (1991). Oxford: OUP, 509–519.
Sorensen, R. (1992), Thought Experiments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stolnitz, J. (1992), “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art”, British Journal of Aesthetics 32, 3: 191–200.
Thompson, J. J. (1971), “A Defense of Abortion”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, 1. Reprinted in G. Sher (ed.), Moral Philosophy (1987). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 631–645.
Young, J. (2001), Art and Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the London School of Economics/Courtauld Institute of Art conference, “Beyond Mimesis and Nominalism: Representation in Art and Science” in June 2006, at a workshop on “Thought Experiments” held at the University of Toronto in May 2007, and at a colloquium at London School of Economics in December 2007. I am grateful to all those who offered helpful comments and criticisms on those occasions. I am also grateful to students in the graduate pro-seminar on “Thought Experiments” that I co-taught at McGill in Fall 2006 for their feedback on some of the ideas in this paper. I am especially grateful to the editors of this volume, and to two anonymous referees, for critical comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper, which helped me to clarify and refocus the paper in ways that (I hope) considerably improved it. Finally, I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a research grant from whom facilitated the research for this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davies, D. (2010). Learning Through Fictional Narratives in Art and Science. In: Frigg, R., Hunter, M. (eds) Beyond Mimesis and Convention. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 262. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3851-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3851-7_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3850-0
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3851-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)