Kant und das Gedankenexperiment. Über eine Kantische Theorie der Gedankenexperimente in den Naturwissenschaften und in der Philosophie

Abstract. Why, for such a long time, has there been no Kantian point of view among the most influential theories about thought experiments? The main historical reason – the main trends in the philosophy of science have always rejected the existence of a priori knowledge – fits a theoretical reason. Kant oscillated between two very different views about the a priori: on the one side, he attributed to it a particular content, whereas on the other side he insisted on its purely formal character. The first interpretation of the a priori was one-sidedly developed by Ørsted and led to his untenable notion of thought experiment. The other interpretation, however, can be further developed into new Kantian theories of thought experiments in the natural sciences and in philosophy.