The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences 2nd Edition by James Robert Brown (PDF)

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Newton’s bucket, Einstein’s elevator, Schrödinger’s cat – these are some of the best-known examples of thought experiments in the natural sciences. But what function do these experiments perform? Are they really experiments at all? Can they help us gain a greater understanding of the natural world? How is it possible that we can learn new things just by thinking? In this revised and updated new edition of his classic text The Laboratory of the Mind, James Robert Brown continues to defend apriorism in the physical world. This edition features two new chapters, one on “counter thought experiments” and another on the development of inertial motion. With plenty of illustrations and updated coverage of the debate between Platonic rationalism and classic empiricism, this is a lively and engaging contribution to the field of philosophy of science.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Straightforward, thorough, and thought provoking. Does a fantastic job explaining EPR and the predominant philosophical attitudes in modern science while showing their inadequacy. I plan on reading through this at least once more. Very refreshing to have a Platonic approach to these modern ideas.

⭐FUN: The author simply has a great voice. Even while arguing with anti-realists, he is humble about his claims which makes it a pleasure to read.RESPECTFUL: Brown considers himself a Mathematical Platonist (proofs exist, they are things that can be grasped) and yet he is very respectful toward his nemesis, John Norton. Because of this mutual respect of rivals, Norton wrote the top blurb on the back of the second edition. This is a fine example of respectful scientific debate.FUN: Here you’ll find interesting discussion of Einstein’s Elevator, Thompson’s Gestating Violinist, Newton’s Bucket, Galileo’s Balls, Searle’s Chinese Room, Locke’s Cobbler Swap, Maxwell’s Demon, Howard’s Inseperability…PLATONIC: Throughout the book Brown makes the claim that ordinary people, through thought experiments, may KNOW truths that were not supplied them by information. This is exactly Plato’s claim about RECALL. Plato said that in the time before you were incarnated in this body, you were in contact with all the essences and forms of things. All you have to do if you want to know anything, is recall that time. Brown does not say Plato is right about the incarnation part, but says that thought experiments do activate that way of knowing, so that by the thought experiment you may know something you were never given the information to know.IMPORTANT: A refutation of Cantor’s Diagonal! Cantor’s proof basically says that the Real numbers can’t make a 1-1 function with the integers. It turn’s out the Real numbers can’t make a 1-1 function with any set, so the proof is meaningless. Since the Real numbers can’t be ordered, the setup for Cantor’s Diagonal is wrong. This is huge! Is there a Nobel prize for Math?IMPORTANT: A new interpretation of EPR. Don Howard (1985) says “Einstein was unhappy with the way Podolsky had written up the argument in EPR.” EPR is the thought experiment created to refute the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and Shrodinger’s Cat. Imagine two entangled particles shooting off in different directions. If you check the spin of one, you know the spin of the other, even if the other is at a very great distance. The knowledge of something at a great distance appears to contradict the speed of light. However, the new claim is that entangled particles do not break the speed of light, since they are not really distant from each other. They are sort of PRESENT with each other, even though we see them a great distance. This interpretation preserves realism, preserves the speed of light, and refutes the crazy copenhagen interpretation that the observer makes shrodinger’s cat be living or dead simply by opening the box. Hooray Howard! If this was known in 1985, then why is nobody talking about it? For example, I read George Musser’s recent …Guide to String Theory, and he says nothing about this interpretation.FASCINATING: Galileo’s Koan: Why did Copernicus describe so well the planets circling the Sun, and then be so wrong about the orbit of Jupiter?IMPORTANT: The last two pages of the book are the best. Here Brown takes Howard’s idea further. If entangled particles may know something about each other at a distance, this must be a Law of Nature. What Brown imples is that there still exist laws of nature that Physics has not yet described. This is huge! I hope Brown receives a Nobel Prize in Physics for this statement.TIES IT ALL TOGETHER: I will quote the last three sentences in the book: “In the EPR thought experiment… the source of the correlation has been the same as the source of the thought experimenter’s knowledge of the remote measurement results — namely, a law of nature. There is a remarkable harmony here: the structure of knowing and the structure of reality mirror one another. Or as Spinoza put it: ‘The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’ (Ethics, II, Prop.7)” Brown is saying that whatever it is we are using to know, when we grasp thought experiments, is the same thing that engangled particles are using to know the spin of its partner thousands of miles away. And that this “whatever,” is a part of nature with natural laws. Spinoza would be proud!THE 2nd Edition has, in my opinion, nothing much to add to the 1991 first edition.IMPERFECTIONS: I think a big hang-up for anti-Platonists is the idea that the essence or form of things is supposed to be elsewhere than the thing. Maybe Plato was wrong about this? If Platonists could accept Aristotle’s Adjustment, that the essence is there IN and WITH the thing, then I think there would be a lot less argument about Realism. For example, Rupert Sheldrake rants about how bad Platonism is… I think the book would benefit from more discussion of Form, Essence, and Reality. Furthermore, since Brown quotes Spinoza only in the last line of the book, why not bring in more of a Spinozistic theory? Spinoza after all said there were three ways of knowing. Perhaps Brown’s final discovery is no different than Spinoza’s Type Three Knowing…This is the best nonfiction book I have read in … ever?I bought the second copy for my daughter who was a philosophy major / math minor.

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