Why do certain ideas suddenly feel inevitable? The speaker explores zeitgeist, the spirit of an era, through examples like the Enlightenment and Joseph Priestley's era of simultaneous scientific breakthroughs. He asks whether zeitgeist is real or just a story we tell ourselves about history.
So phrases that get to become aphorisms, you know, kind of even clichés, have something that sticks, right? I mean, there's something about them that we find compelling enough to use them over and over again, and then they tend take on this, you know, different kind of status linguistically and cognitively too. And maybe that's what I want to talk about. So, you know that phrase, "There's something in the air," you know, "Something's in the air"? There's a German word which most of us now have heard, uh, because it's become more a part of everyday, uh, use. And, and the word is zeitgeist, right? Now zeitgeist is not exactly something in the air. It's, it's, it's more kind of macro than that. It's, it's more— well, it translates as spirit of the times, right? Um, and the spirit of the times means that there are The proposition is that there are patterns in history and that those patterns can be delineated into periods in which there's something in the air, there's something happening. And I'm reading a great book right now by Stephen Johnson entitled The Invention of Air, and it's about Joseph Priestley, the guy who— the guy, hey, that guy, you know, that guy Joe Priestley, you know, the scientist who discovered oxygen among other things. He also invented soda water, you know, who knew? He invented soda water. And at the same time that Priestley was working on his experiments, there were all kinds of other experiments going on around electricity. This was in the late 18th century. You know, he was a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin. So there was something in the air. There was something in the air. There was something happening. There was a spirit of the times. And, you know, we talk about, you know, the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, you know, all of these periods in which we delineate, try to put a name on, try to capture the zeitgeist with a phrase. So So now, the reason I'm interested in your thoughts about this is that, what do you think's in the air now? What's the zeitgeist now? Is there, you know, we've been talking since the political events in the US over the last year, we've been talking about, you know, kind of a change. Change was the, was the, the driving theme behind Barack Obama's election to the presidency? Well, a change means that we're going to delineate, we're going to stop doing some things, we're going to start doing other things, which means there's going to be a shift in the zeitgeist. So I'd really be interested in your thoughts. First of all, what are your thoughts about the zeitgeist, about, you know, the idea there's something being in the air? Is that just, you know, kind of some kind of construction that we come up with to kid ourselves? Or what are your thoughts about it? And secondly, if you do have thoughts about there actually being a zeitgeist, actually being a spirit of the times, how would you capture it? What are we going— what are we— what, what are we maybe going from and going to, um, that would delineate the period we've just been through to the period that we are in now and maybe beginning? So, thoughts on Something in the Air.
