Historian on secrets of nature - "Science is very close to us"
Science is near and far to us at the same time, said the science historian Ernst Peter Fischer in the Dlf. Their laws are less fascinating than their secrets. People used the results of science on a daily basis, but often without thinking about them or understanding them.
When asked where we encounter science in everyday life without becoming an issue, Ernst Peter Fischer replies: “It occurs to me that we are actually surrounded by science, that we lead our lives with science. We sit at the computer, we use a cell phone, we turn on the television. We use a refrigerator, we drive, we use a remote control, whatever. Science is very close to us, in everyday life, in handling. But it is very far from us, in the sense that we don't understand it at all and sometimes we don't even want to understand it. "
Science deepens secrets
Albert Einstein had already complained in 1930 - when the radio came up - that all people should be ashamed who use science and technology but understand as little about it as the cow does about the botany of plants. People would like to use things, but are reluctant to explain or understand them, says Ernst Peter Fischer. There is definitely some catching up to do, says the science historian.
Regarding the relationship between near and far, life and science, he notes that science cannot reveal secrets, it can only deepen them. The fact that stones fall to the ground is due to gravity. But it only increases the fascination for the banal process of something falling. According to the historian of science Ernst Peter Fischer, closeness is created by the mysterious and less by the obvious and obvious.
