How Do Ideas Spread?

How is it that certain ideas get taken up and lead to policy changes? In this video, KERSTIN MARIA PAHL looks at how an increasing interest in human feelings at the end of the eighteenth century underpinned subsequent efforts to abolish child labor. Employing semantic, sociological, quantitative and qualitative tools to trace philosophical alongside technological developments, Pahl’s interdisciplinary approach provides us with new insight on the “age of sensibility”. Ongoing work will explore the darker side of the prioritization of feelings in relation to missionary expeditions and military practice.