In a recent interview with Sci Fi Wire, Fringe star Joshua Jackson said, among other things:

It's the science side of science fiction, so it takes the physical world that we live in and then sort of goes just past that edge.

Fringe takes the world that we all live in and says, 'All right, so what you know about this cup you don't actually know, because if you look at it from over here, it's something entirely different.' And that will be the thrust of the show: that the physical world that we live in, without the addition of any magic or any supernatural, is far more than we all see it as being.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term Hard Science Fiction, it basically treats the science as interesting in and of itself--and therefore worthy of development--from consistency to plausibility--just as if it were one of the main protagonists of the story.