Heidegger saw angst as the response of a being (Dasein) facing the certainty of death. I don’t know if Heidegger would have agreed with how I’ve extended his concept of angst. I understand all being as composite. Being is composed of beings, and it is the composing of being. Any being at any scale facing its demise experiences angst, and this demise does not have any necessary connection to biological death.

Through this interpretation of angst I connect Heidegger to Kuhn. The resistence of normal science to revolutionary science is not hatred of the novel, but the destruction to the familiar required to order the unfamiliar within a new scientific paradigm. I extend this also to practical paradigms (the breaking of habits) and poetic paradigms (the changing of spiritual vision or cultural tastes).

This is one of those intellectual moves (or “dances”) I half picked up, half invented and started using without explicitly acknowledging the modifications I made.