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Counter Thought Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

James Robert Brown
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Let's begin with an old example. In De Rerum Naturua, Lucretius presented a thought experiment to show that space is infinite. We imagine ourselves near the alleged edge of space; we throw a spear; we see it either sail through the ‘edge’ or we see it bounce back. In the former case the ‘edge’ isn't the edge, after all. In the latter case, there must be something beyond the ‘edge’ that repelled the spear. Either way, the ‘edge’ isn't really an edge of space, after all. So space is infinite.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 61 , October 2007 , pp. 155 - 177
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2007

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