We want to fathom, understand – know! This scientific need focuses on bild der Wissenschaft in the February edition in a special way: two authors illuminate the success story of science and research with historical distance and also show the limited possibilities of humans to gain knowledge.
What expectations did people have in the early days of modern science, which wishes were fulfilled and what remained unequaled? Two historical lists serve as the basis for answering these questions within the scope of the bdw title topic: 350 years ago, the Irish chemist Robert Boyle formulated 24 world problems, which research should address. Then, 200 years later, the German researcher Emil du Bois-Reymond presented another famous list: He named seven world puzzles that he believed could not be solved by science.
In the first article of the three-part title topic, science historian Ernst Peter Fischer deals with Boyle’s wish list from the 1660s. This pioneer of modern science, for example, focused on the extension of life, the art of flying and the provision of light. Fischer reports how this collection was created and how Boyle’s wishes, which at the time were utopian in the end, were actually fulfilled: In the following centuries, science brought unprecedented practical progress and insights into the secrets of the world. The author then focuses on the present and the current role of science. He makes it clear which mankind’s hopes would be on a wish list for research today.
There remain secrets
The basis of the second article is the list of Emil du Bois-Reymond’s World Puzzles. Among other things, the philosopher doubted that it would ever be possible to grasp the nature of matter and force and to understand the origin of all movement and the origin of consciousness. The bdw editor Rüdiger Vaas describes how Bois-Reymond developed his brilliant ideas and why they are still valid today. Accordingly, even the most complex approaches and technologies – from the theory of relativity to brain research to supercomputers – are unable to cross certain boundaries: du Bois-Reymonds’ world puzzles remain mysteries.
The title topic is rounded off by a more detailed look at the limits of science: In the article “Where science ends”, Vaas illustrates how modern physics fails because of its ideal of the full predictability of the world. His conclusion is that chaos, relativity and quantum theory as well as mathematics limit understanding in several ways.
Find out more in the February issue of bild der Wissenschaft, which will be available in stores from January 21st.