gedankenexperiment

See also Gedankenexperiment

English

Alternative forms

• gedanken experiment

Etymology

From German Gedankenexperiment (“thought experiment”), from Gedanke (“thought”) +‎ Experiment (“experiment”).

Noun

gedankenexperiment (plural gedankenexperiments)

1. thought experiment

   • 2005 January 6, Cory Doctorow, “[1]”, BoingBoing, accessed on 2012-02-04:

     So here's a gedankenexperiment for ya: what if the DC and Marvel put all their funnybooks on the Web two months after they were shipped to the stores?

   • 2005 Aug, Eugene Mirabelli, “The Woman in Schrödinger's Wave Equations”, Fantasy & Science Fiction, volume 109, number 2, page 143: 

     John told her about his dissertation, about the equations he had concocted from a gedanken experiment. "What's a gedanken experiment?" she asked him. / "It's where you just think an experiment, but you don't actually do it, you just think it through," he told her.

Usage notes

Often found as two words gedanken experiment.

Translations

thought experiment

• German: Gedankenexperiment (de) n

• Swedish: tankeexperiment n