A friend of mine raved about Lawrence Weschler’s book, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, which remarks upon the Museum of Jurassic Technology. By coincidence, that was on the same day that I read a New York Times magazine article about Casey Affleck, who visited that museum and met the said Mr. Wilson of Weschler’s book title:
“One thing Wilson said to him particularly struck Affleck; he mentioned it later as we resumed walking the museum’s halls: the notion that ideas for exhibits in the museum arise in the air between the people who work there; the ideas don’t belong to any one person.”
It may seem inconsequential, yet I was immediately drawn to that idea of ideas arising, almost spectrally, like emanations from some joint, subconscious telepathic communion. As more serious researchers endeavor for truths in group dynamics, social norms, neuroscience, and so on, there remains something more magically appealing in the mystery…