Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An imagined sequence of events that is used to illustrate or investigate the consequences of a given action or condition, especially in philosophy and theoretical physics.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun physics, philosophy an attempt to solve a
problem using thepower ofhuman imagination
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Translation of German Gedankenexperiment : Gedanke, thought + Experiment, experiment.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
A calque of German Gedankenexperiment.
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Examples
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garyth123 commented on the word thought experiment
Post credit crunch big science?
January 1, 2009