In this chapter I selectively and briefly discuss aspects of the critical, philosophical and psychological traditions relating in particular to the epistemic experiences of the sublime and epiphany and some other related feelings.

The Sublime

The experience of the sublime involves both an epistemic feeling and an arousal. This is an epistemic feeling of coming to know something significant, which is often ineffable. Writing in 1804, Thomas Moore brings out the ineffability of the sublime when he says about Niagara Falls, ‘[i]t is impossible by pen or pencil to convey even a faint idea of their magnificence […] We must have new combinations of language to describe the Fall of Niagara’ (Dowden 1964: 77).

The experience of the sublime is characteristically triggered by the perception of something extreme, such as something extremely large or deep, old, fast or slow. Kant cites as triggers, ‘the broad ocean agitated by storms’ (1952: 92), ‘shapeless mountain masses towering one above the other in wild disorder, with their pyramids of ice’ (1952: 104) or ‘deep ravines’ (1952: 121). Addison says that‘[o]ur imagination loves to be filled with an object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views, and feel a delightful stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension of them’ (Spectator no.412, in Monk 1960: 57). Why might extreme objects be a trigger of a strong experience? One possibility is that the extremely large object is experienced as looming, and hence a threat to be feared like a predator, and so a source of the fight-flight-freeze arousals. Extreme objects might also be perceived as tokens that are very discrepant relative to their types, by virtue of their size. But it is alternatively possible that very large tokens might be seen as too close to their type, as an effect of the magnified scale; the component features that define the type are more emphasized in very large objects, and this perhaps makes the very large token uncannily close to the type. This can be seen for example in Marc Quinn's supersized but otherwise hyperrealistic sculptures. The idea that an extreme token is discrepant relative to type applies also to the very small, which can produce the sublime even though there is no looming effect that might provoke fear.