thought experiment

noun

|Updated on: 15 Jul 2018

Definition of thought experiment

: gedankenexperiment

Recent Examples of thought experiment from the Web

One of the Microsoft Aether group’s thought experiments illustrates the conundrum.

— jonathan vanian, Fortune, "Unmasking A.I.'s Bias Problem," 25 June 2018
No matter what happens, this thought experiment proffers, someone is going to die.

— betsy morais, Longreads, "The Menace and the Promise of Autonomous Vehicles," 13 June 2018
Bush, who had taken his company from thought experiment to troposphere, couldn’t seem to keep it there—let alone launch it into a sustainable business orbit.

— clifton leaf, Fortune, "The Blunt Truth About athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush," 6 June 2018
This thought experiment is a fascinating way to consider the way people live around the world, which technologies spread rapidly, and which don't.

— sophie weiner, Popular Mechanics, "What Would the World Look Like if There Were Only 100 People?," 10 June 2017
And by the 1970s, new modeling and thought experiments began convincing an increasing number of researchers.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Three Scientists Behind the Detection of Gravitational Waves Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics," 3 Oct. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'thought experiment.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.