popper-logic-scientific-discovery

APPENDIX *xi
On the Use and Misuse of
Imaginary Experiments, Especially
in Quantum Theory
The criticisms presented in the later parts of this appendix are logical in
character. My point is not to refute certain arguments, some of which,
for all I know, may have long been discarded by their originators. I try,
rather, to show that certain methods of argument are inadmissible—
methods which have been used, without being challenged, for many
years in the discussions about the interpretation of quantum theory. It
is, in the main, the apologetic use of imaginary experiments which I am
criticizing here, rather than any particular theory in whose defence
these experiments were propounded. 1 Least of all do I wish to create
the impression that I am doubting the fruitfulness of imaginary
experiments.
(1) One of the most important imaginary experiments in the
history of natural philosophy, and one of the simplest and most
ingenious arguments in the history of rational thought about our
universe, is contained in Galileo’s criticism of Aristotle’s theory of
1 More especially, I do not wish to criticize the quantum theory here, or any particular
interpretation of it.