ABSTRACT
Hans-Christian Ørsted introduced the term “thought experiment” to p2hilosophy in 1811, although it did not get much philosophical attention until the 1980s. This is therefore a relatively young topic of discussion (in philosophical timescales), still concerned with the most fundamental questions of what thought experiments are, what they do, and how they do it. This introduction will trace some of the work that has been done already. The chapters that follow will take us further.
