"Experiments of Pure Reason": Kantianism and Thought Experiments in Science

Journal title EPISTEMOLOGIA
Author/s Yiftach J.H. Fehige
Publishing Year 2012 Issue 2012/1 Language English
Pages 20 P. 141-160 File size 222 KB
DOI 10.3280/EPIS2012-001011
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Marco Buzzoni has presented a Kantian account of thought experiments in science as a serious rival to the current empiricist and Platonic accounts. This paper takes the first steps of a comprehensive assessment of this account in order to further the more general discussion of the feasibility of a Kantian theory of scientific thought experiments. Such a discussion is overdue. To this effect the broader question is addressed as to what motivates a Kantian approach. Buzzoni’s account and the assessment developed in this paper are warranted by the fact that the history of philosophical inquiry into thought experiments is deeply interwoven with Kant’s philosophy. This history will be depicted here for the first time in more comprehensive terms to contextualize Buzzoni’s account in historical and systematic perspective.

Keywords: Thought experiments, Platonism, Science and Fiction, Georg C. Lichtenberg, German Romanticism, Hans Christian Ørsted, Marco Buzzoni.

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Yiftach J.H. Fehige, "Experiments of Pure Reason": Kantianism and Thought Experiments in Science in "EPISTEMOLOGIA" 1/2012, pp 141-160, DOI: 10.3280/EPIS2012-001011