Alla Martinenko

The article is devoted to the study of mental experiment genesis as a metaprocedure for obtaining new theoretical knowledge, substantiating its role in the formation of scientific research style in antiquity. Based on the analysis of pre-Socratics’ and Aristotle’s doctrines, the authors reveal the relationship between mental experimentation and the process of scientific physical knowledge origin, as well as the «practice» of working with it. It is concluded that in ancient science, a mental experiment becomes the universal method of obtaining the truth in the limited framework of ontology paradigm.