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Discussing What Would Happen: The Role of Thought Experiments in Galileo’s Dialogues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Carla Rita Palmerino
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Abstract

Thought experiments play an important epistemic, rhetorical, and didactic function in Galileo’s dialogues. In some cases, Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio agree about what would happen in an imaginary scenario and try to understand whether the predicted outcome is compatible with their respective theoretical assumptions. There are, however, also situations in which the predictions of the three interlocutors turn out to be theory laden. Salviati, Sagredo, and Simplicio not only disagree about what would happen, but they reject one another’s solutions as question begging and sometimes even dismiss one another’s thought experiments as misleading or nonsensical.

Type
History of Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 906 - 918
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Peter Machamer for organizing the symposium “Galileo and Philosophy of Science”; my fellow speakers Maarten van Dyck, Brian Hepburn, and David Marshall Miller; as well as the participants in the symposium for their questions and comments and the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

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