Chris Edwards - Thought Experiments: History and Applications for Education

Thought experiments depend upon the development of proper hypotheticals that take reality into account and employ the closest analogies for purposes of understanding. Though many thought experiments have become famous, they tend to be viewed by scientists as interesting for developing explanatory clarity, but not particularly useful for actually doing science. The process remains scattershotoccasionally employed, but not developed to its full potential.

The purpose of this book was not just to create a historical background for thought experiments, but to show their use in clarifying models involving time, psychology, ethics, and even history. My hope is also that this book will encourage caution in anyone who hopes to develop a thought experiment in any field of study. Thought experiments are delicate, and their parameters can easily be torn down when new facts are discovered or a slight difference is found between the thought experiment and its real-world analog. Improper thought experiments can lead to the wrong type of decision making, particularly in politics and ethics.

Generally speaking, bad decisions get made because the thought processes behind the decisions remain connected to some long-standing historical process that traps someones thinking. Most of the time, people cannot see how their thinking is connected to these historically-created structures. We feel guilty for violating norms created thousands of years ago for other places and peoples, yet cannot see that those norms might need to shift.

A woman in Afghanistan, for example, might feel just as guilty for leaving the house without her burka as a homosexual male would have felt in conservative Christian Ireland during the 1950s. Thought experiments help to update the ethical norms with the times; they develop clarity and can do real good.

Mostly, however, the thought experiment reaches its full potential as a teaching method. The teacher can express an old thought experiment, create a new one, or ask students to create them. The creation of thought experiments is engaging and useful, and in the process of doing so, students will find that they must master certain forms of content in order to develop the parameters of thought experiments.

Given their importance in the history of ideas, it would seem that thought experiments would be given a great place of importance as a discrete intellectual category. The classroom potential for a curriculum based on thought experiments is vast. Even in this age of research and wealth there is a place for experiments created out of pure thought.

Arthur, Benjamin. (2015). The Magic of Math: Solving for X and Figuring Out Why. New York: Basic Books.

Asimov, Isaac. (1950) I, Robot. New York: The Gnome Press.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. (2015). Between the World and Me. New York: Penguin Books.

Chang, Iris. (1991). The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII. New York: Basic Books.

Chang, Jung, and Jon Halladay, Jon (2005). The Unknown Story of Mao. New York: Anchor Books.

Criado-Perez, Caroline. (2019). Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed forMen. New York: Henry N. Abrams.

Free Solo. (2018). National Geographic Films.

French, Howard W. (2017). Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past HelpsShape Chinas Push for Global Power. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Gleick, James. (2016). Time Travel: A History. New York: Pantheon.

Gribbin, John. (2017). Einsteins Masterwork: 1915 and the General Theory of Relativity. New York/London: Pegasus Books.

Kline, Morris. (Reprint: 1985). Mathematics for the Nonmathematician. New York: Dover Publications.

Morrison, Toni. (1977). Song of Solomon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Morrison, Toni. (1987). Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Ohlson, Kristin. (2011).The End of Morality. Discover Magazine.

Pinker, Steven. (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. New York: Penguin Books.

Vogel, Ezra F. (2011). Deng Xiaoping And the Transformation of China. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

WEB REFERENCES

Davies, Paul. (2007).The Flexi-Laws of Physics. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426101-300-the-flexi-laws-of-physics/.

The Declaration of Sentiments (1848). https://www.britannica.com/event/Declaration-of-Sentiments.

Lincoln, Abraham. (1858). https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/602394-it-is-the-eternal-struggle-between-these-two-principles.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. (1848). The Manifesto of the Communist Party. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/.

Stalin on Rapid Industrialization. Speech to Industrial Managers. February 1931. https://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Stalin_on_Rapid_Industrialization.

Xiaoping, Wei. (2018). Lenins NEP and Deng Xiaopings Economic Reform. In The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy, pp. 531-548. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-51650-3_18.

Thought experiments come in different categories, and some experiments will overlap. Three of the most famous involve one involving the concept of a future singularity, or point where the universe itself becomes conscious; the Trolley Problem, which is a riddle of sorts that engages ones emotional and cognitive reasoning skills; and The Prisoners Dilemma, which is a construct of game theory and is tied to rational choice. Analyzing these three best-known thought experiments will help to provide logical consistency as we expand the concepts in subsequent chapters.