The English term thought experiment was coined as a calque of , and it first appeared in the 1897 English translation of one of Mach's papers.Mach, Ernst (1897), "On Thought Experiments", in Knowledge and Error (translated by Thomas J. McCormack and Paul Foulkes), Dordrecht Holland: Reidel, 1976, pp. 134-47. Prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time for both scientists and philosophers. The irrealis moods are ways to categorize it or to speak about it. This helps explain the extremely wide and diverse range of the application of the term thought experiment once it had been introduced into English.
The English term thought experiment was coined as a cal.que of , and it first appeared in the 1897 English translation of one of Mach's papersMach, Ernst (1897) "On Thought Experiments", in Knowledge and Error (translated by Thomas J. McCormack and Paul Foulkes), Dordrecht Holland: Reidel, 1976, pp. 134-47. Prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time for both scientists and philosophers. The irrealis moods are ways to categorize it or to speak about it. This helps explain the extremely wide and diverse range of the application of the term thought exper,iment once it had been introduced into English.