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The thought experiment did not originate with Einstein. The name gedankenexperiment predates him and Maxwell's use of the concept. So the article also misreport
by drewcoo 6y ago
The thought experiment did not originate with Einstein. The name gedankenexperiment predates him and Maxwell's use of the concept. So the article also misreports the origination with Maxwell. Maybe they should have skipped the couching in history if they didn't know the history or even want to look it up.
And now that I'm reading the article's comments, other readers have also made those points.
This article is useful as a tackle dummy for skeptics but not much else.
- holidayacct 6y agoThank you, I read the title and was trying to figure out what this person was talking about. There are references to thought experiments going back to the Ancient Greece and Rome.
- Jyaif 6y agoIt's pretty obvious that thought experiments have existed for a long time ("If I kill him, I can mate with the females"). I think what the blog post is saying is that thought experiments applied to physics became popular with Einstein.
- guerrilla 6y agoThis is also wrong. Everyone from Aristotle to Newton and onward to Einstein were doing thought experiments in physics the entire time.
- typon 6y agoIbn Sina proposed the famous "Floating man" thought experiment a thousand years ago
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoYou couldn't have... you know...? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_man
- mellosouls 6y agoThought experiments probably go back as far as thinking. Plato's Cave and Zeno's paradoxes are famous ancient ones; the article is rather misleading in its association of them with recent times.
- pravus 6y agoThis was my thought as well. I have no idea why a special term is ascribed to physicists for just thinking logically.