Total Solar Eclipses as Example Illustrations on a Pan- Emotional Spectrum

Abstract

The history of total solar eclipses usually is to be found within the history of science. However, a true social history of total eclipses must include the experience of the general population that witnessed it. I am interested in the emotions induced by a total eclipse of the Sun in the recent past. I surmise that solar eclipses engender all eight of the psycho-evolutionary classifications of emotion enunciated by Robert Plutchik. There are eight primary emotions in Plutchik’s system. I suggest examples corresponding to each, relying on accounts of the total solar eclipse of 7 August 1869.