Gott und die Lust zur Mechanik

Even 275 years after the birth of the theologian and pastor, inventor and mechanic Philipp Matthäus Hahn (1739 -1790), his personality is fascinating in today’s world, which usually sees piety and faith in tension with a critical spirit and the scientific questioning of reality and life. For Hahn, born in times of upheaval – here pietistic enthusiasm, there enlightened reason – brought together in his person and in his work the two aspects of world knowledge: He saw in the earthly here (earth/world) the place of God’s revelation. To recognize this in its divine order as far as possible was considered by him as the deepest expression of piety. And the possibility of man to work as a creator on a small scale, to reproduce the universe in a machine and to communicate the order of God to the world through this, that was his task and calling.