Ernst-Peter Fischer

When Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) was awarded the Radio Play Prize of the War Blind in 1959, she stated in her acceptance speech: “Truth is reasonable for man.”

Does this still apply to the latest insights of science, which are more than just correct and reveal uncanny depths from which the world and human understanding of it spring? In the Age of Enlightenment, a prize question of the Berlin Academy of Arts was whether one could expect the results of research to be shared with all people or whether it would be better to let the people remain in a reassuring error.

The lecture uses numerous examples to discuss what the answer might be today, and it shows what happens when a person confronts the truth.

Ernst Peter Fischer, born in 1947, studied mathematics, physics and biology and habilitated in 1987 in the history of science. In the years that followed, he taught as a professor at the universities of Constance and Heidelberg. He is scientific advisor of the Foundation Forum for Responsibility, publicist and book author of Verbotenes Wissen (2019) or the eponymous work on the lecture Ist die Wahrheit dem Menschen zumutbar? (1992).