Foreword to "German physics" [August 1935]

Philipp Lenard

pp. 100-109

in: Klaus Hentschel (ed), Physics and national socialism, Basel, Birkhäuser, 1996

Abstract

"German physics?" you will ask.^[2]—I could also have said Aryan physics or physics of the Nordic type of peoples, physics of the probers of reality, of truth seekers, the physics of those who have founded scientific research. —"Science is international and will always remain so!" you will want to protest. But this is inevitably based upon a fallacy. In reality, as with everything that man creates, science is determined by race or by blood. It can seem to be international when universally valid scientific results are wrongly traced to a common origin^[3]or when it is not acknowledged that science supplied by peoples of different countries is identical or similar to German science, and that their science could only have been produced because and to the extent that other peoples are or were likewise of a predominantly Nordic racial mix. Nations of different racial mixes practice science differently.