Caffeine and the Enlightenment
I can do no better than to just recommend that you go and read Cosma Shalizi’s meditation on how caffeine may be a causal factor in the formation of the Enlightenment. Tongue perhaps mildly grazing cheek, but still. It’s great. I couldn’t come up with a title like “Neuropharmacological Foundations of the Public Sphere”; I’m just not that clever.