Thought experiment: Encyclopedia II - Thought experiment - Famous thought experiments

Thought experiment - Famous thought experiments

Thought experiment - Physics

Thought experiments are popular in physics and include:

• Brownian ratchet (Richard Feynman's "perpetual motion" machine which does not violate the second law, and does not work)
• Casimir cones (Basis for almost perpetual motion machine fueled by entropy)[1]
• Galileo's ship (classical relativity principle) 1632
• GHZ experiment (quantum mechanics)
• EPR paradox (quantum mechanics) (forms of this have actually been performed)
• Maxwell's demon (thermodynamics) 1871
• Plato's theory of refraction (optics)
• Quantum suicide (quantum mechanics)
• Schrödinger's cat (quantum mechanics)
• Twin paradox (special relativity)
• Wigner's friend (quantum mechanics)
• Wittgenstein's rod (engineering mechanics)- an exercise in visualization
• Bucket argument- argues that space is absolute, not relational

Thought experiment - Philosophy

The field of philosophy makes extensive use of thought experiments:

• Brain-in-a-vat (epistemology)
• Changing places (reflexive monism, philosophy of mind)
• China brain (physicalism, philosophy of mind)
• Chinese room (philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, cognitive science)
• Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy)
• Dining Philosophers (computer science)
• God's Debris (religion and awareness)
• Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment in the philosophy of language
• Mary's room (philosophy of mind)
• Original position (politics)
• The Ship of Theseus (concept of identity)
• Simulated reality (philosophy, computer science, cognitive science)
• Swamp man (personal identity)
• Trolley problem (ethics)
• Zeno's paradoxes (classical Greek problems of the infinite)

Thought experiment - Mathematics

• Ping-pong ball conundrum (infinity and cardinality)
• Gabriel's Horn ('You can fill my horn, but not paint it')

Thought experiment - Miscellaneous

• Braitenberg vehicles (robotics, neural control and sensing systems) (some have actually been built)
• Doomsday argument (anthropic principle)
• Infinite monkey theorem (probability, infinity)
• Halting problem (limits of computability)
• Turing machine (limits of computability)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Famous thought experiments", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki