Abstract

This thesis is a conceptual and epistemological analysis of imagination and scientific thought experiments. The first part of this thesis deals with the definition and typology of imagination, and with the relation between imagination and related mental states such as supposition, visualisation, hallucination and memory. The second part of this thesis deals with the question whether we can use imagination to gain knowledge about the natural world - I argue that we can. The third and final part of this thesis deals with scientific thought experiments: I propose a novel account of scientific thought experiments based on a famous theory of fiction and a recently-developed philosophical account of scientific models.