From Lucretius throwing a spear beyond the boundary of the universe to Einstein racing against a beam of light, thought experiments stand as a fascinating challenge to the necessity of data in the empirical sciences. Are these experiments, conducted uniquely in our imagination, simply rhetorical devices or communication tools or are they an essential part of scientific practice? This volume surveys the current state of the debate and explores new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments.

Science and Hypothesis is a classic text in history and philosophy of science. Widely popular since its original publication in 1902, this first new translation of the work in over a century features unpublished material missing from earlier editions.

Addressing errors introduced by Greenstreet and Halsted in their early 20th-century translations, it incorporates all the changes, corrections and additions Poincare made over the years. Taking care to update the writing for a modern audience, Poincare's ideas and arguments on the role of hypotheses in mathematics and in science...