Being in the air: An intellectual and aesthetic history of climate

Current conceptualizations of climate and climate change are dominated by the abstract idea of climate as “the average weather.” This scientific understanding needs to be complemented by a cultural concept of climate which has a long tradition from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. In order to understand what it means to “be in the air” culturally, politically, and medically, we need a cultural conception of climate as an environment. This talk by Professor Eva Horn, University of Vienna, provides historical and literary examples of what it might mean to understand the air from the inside, as an element of individual, social, and cultural life.