This article discusses the important and influential views of John Burgess on the nature of mathematical rigour and John Norton on the nature of thought experiments. Their accounts turn out to be surprisingly similar in spite of different subject matters. Among other things both require a reconstruction of the initial proof or thought experiment in order to officially evaluate them, even though we almost never do this in practice. The views of each are plausible and seem to solve interesting problems. However, both have problems and would seem not able to do justice to some interesting examples. They fail in similar ways. More pluralistic accounts of proof and of thought experiment could embrace aspects of each, while rejecting their claims to universality. An ideal account (not provided here) would contribute to explanation and understanding as well as evidence. These are important topics for future work.

本文讨论了约翰·伯吉斯关于数学严谨性本质和约翰诺顿关于思想实验本质的重要而有影响的观点。尽管主题不同，但他们的叙述却惊人地相似。除其他外，两者都需要重建最初的证明或思想实验才能正式评估它们，尽管我们在实践中几乎从未这样做过。每个人的观点都是合理的，似乎解决了有趣的问题。然而，两者都有问题，似乎无法对一些有趣的例子做出公正的评价。他们以类似的方式失败。更多元化的证明和思想实验可以包含每个方面，同时拒绝他们对普遍性的主张。一个理想的帐户（此处未提供）将有助于解释和理解以及证据。这些都是未来工作的重要课题。