(23) The Caffinated Enlightenment

      In Caffeine and the Coming of the Enlightenment, Roger Schmidt eloquently defends his thesis that “caffeine, books, and mechanical clocks disrupted irrevocably the ancient architecture of human sleep, and with its collapse, the angels and their odd companions began to depart” (Schmidt 133). The major components of Schmidt’s argument is the role that caffeine, books, and mechanical clocks played in the transformation of sleep. The first major element that brought a change to sleep was the introduction of caffeine into daily life. Schmidt says, “Caffeine fuels insomnia as it simultaneously attempts to alleviate the symptoms” (137). In the fight against sleep, caffeine was used at all hours of the day in order to combat exhaustion and focus into the wee hours of the night. The primary activity that then consumed the night was reading, for business and pleasure. Reading, a task that was formerly too monotonous to keep a scholar awake through the night was overcome through artificial stimulation received through teas and coffees. A catalyst to this superfluous reading was the new perception of “time as something that spends itself out, never to return again” (Schmidt 138). Time became something measurable, available to all through clocks and wristwatches, and people began to carefully plan the use of their time. Schmidt also describes being baffled by the lack of research on the history of sleep given the amount of clinical research that has been dedicated to the subject. That is what drove him to find out the history of sleep and why it changed from what our ancestor's experienced.

Sources:
http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/juliane-mendelsohn/7871-a-new-philosophy-for-the-21st-century
Schmidt, Roger.  “Caffeine and the Coming of the Enlightenment.”  Raritan 23.1 (2003): 129-49.  EBSCO, 2003.  Web.