Zeitgeists

Just sitting in the university union listening to the student radio Snow Patrol’s “Open your eyes” is on. It has this effect that I was struggling to understand and produce myself in the late 90’s – a sense of yearning – it is interesting (and not the first time) that something I felt within has found its way into the outside world without me doing anything :-) As a kid i used to love that feeling as something broke the need to develop after the 4th bar repeat, that surprise that something doesn’t want to change and is staying on track… a joyous feeling quite alien to the intellectual need for music to evolve and develop… this has become the mainstay of modern dance music… and yet aged 8 before it all really changed I was hammering out repeating 5ths and 4th on the keyboard at home…

I wonder if this thing I search for in logic will emerge of its own accord without me doing anything?

This harks back to reading the History of Western Philosophy by B.Russell the point of which seems to be the question is it individuals who come up with ideas or are they a product of society changing? What has been called since the zeitgeist. My feeling is that it is the zeitgeist which creates new things, but it needs to be expressed by people (like emergent properties need their particles on which to be expressed). Thus we rather erroneously strive to get our names on new discoveries when if it’s not us it will be someone else… because we are only the canvas on which the zeitgeist is painting.