Panning back a little bit, esp. prompted by your citing of Dan Dennett above, Brian Boyd makes a case in On the Origin of Stories that might be summed up in the notion that all fiction is a thought experiment of one sort or another. He writes that “The ability to imagine the world as other than it is underpins pretend play, and the ability to conceive of alternatives underpins all modeling. Free thought needs alternatives and counterfactuals. A mental architecture that processes only true information remains severely constricted. Most discovery involves supposition….much of the indefinite enormity of possibility space has been made concrete and particular through the examples of story” (pg. 197-199).

Fiction as thought-experiment…create some combustion, a new compound on paper…lives, half-lives: a kinder, gentler meth.

Panning back a little bit, esp. prompted by your citing of Dan Dennett above, Brian Boyd makes a case in On the Origin of Stories that might be summed up in the notion that all fiction is a thought experiment of one sort or another. He writes that “The ability to imagine the world as other than it is underpins pretend play, and the ability to conceive of alternatives underpins all modeling. Free thought needs alternatives and counterfactuals. A mental architecture that processes only true information remains severely constricted. Most discovery involves supposition….much of the indefinite enormity of possibility space has been made concrete and particular through the examples of story” (pg. 197-199).

Fiction as thought-experiment…create some combustion, a new compound on paper…lives, half-lives: a kinder, gentler meth.

then, in a poem or literary text the thought experiment could either be explicitly stated or instead implied, meaning the first clause would be absent. and in such a case, several instances of the unstated thought experiment (the first clause) would be required for the reader to extrapolate the underlying logic. although, there would also need to be references to olfaction to thereby make sense of the skewed/blurry vision, perhaps by giving instances of hyper-sensitive olfaction to complete the entire logic of the implied thought experiment. i don’t know if i’m speaking clearly here. i’m trying to distinguish between thought experiment as premise, and ‘the conclusions drawn from it’ as ‘how it would appear in the world’, the birdishness being but one example of what would happen if vision = olfaction. if [imagined thought experiment], then [outcome of applying the thought experiment to the world].

so by reimagining certain premises, you can construct (via internal logic) different literary environments? in the same way, einstein reimagined the basic premise of space and time by considering the speed of light as the only invariable, and thus (following the internal logic of that reasoning) our entire sense of reality became rearranged, i.e. space and time could now dilate and contract. if i’m interpreting you correctly, i think this aligns with some criticism i wrote about awhile ago regarding some contemporary authors i’m intrigued by.

with that understanding i would say, yes, i use thought experiments in my writing. i’ve even written an unpublished poem/text titled, ‘gedanken experiment’, which is the german and i think original neologism for ‘thought experiment’. i love thought experiments. i would build a house out of them if i could, but my reasoning is usually too weak to withstand any electricity or plumbing.

then, in a poem or literary text the thought experiment could either be explicitly stated or instead implied, meaning the first clause would be absent. and in such a case, several instances of the unstated thought experiment (the first clause) would be required for the reader to extrapolate the underlying logic. although, there would also need to be references to olfaction to thereby make sense of the skewed/blurry vision, perhaps by giving instances of hyper-sensitive olfaction to complete the entire logic of the implied thought experiment. i don’t know if i’m speaking clearly here. i’m trying to distinguish between thought experiment as premise, and ‘the conclusions drawn from it’ as ‘how it would appear in the world’, the birdishness being but one example of what would happen if vision = olfaction. if [imagined thought experiment], then [outcome of applying the thought experiment to the world].

so by reimagining certain premises, you can construct (via internal logic) different literary environments? in the same way, einstein reimagined the basic premise of space and time by considering the speed of light as the only invariable, and thus (following the internal logic of that reasoning) our entire sense of reality became rearranged, i.e. space and time could now dilate and contract. if i’m interpreting you correctly, i think this aligns with some criticism i wrote about awhile ago regarding some contemporary authors i’m intrigued by.

with that understanding i would say, yes, i use thought experiments in my writing. i’ve even written an unpublished poem/text titled, ‘gedanken experiment’, which is the german and i think original neologism for ‘thought experiment’. i love thought experiments. i would build a house out of them if i could, but my reasoning is usually too weak to withstand any electricity or plumbing.