It is occasionally the case

[kaberett]

that I will be reading a paper about, say, the discovery of an element, or the physics governing which elements end up in which minerals - the sort of stuff that forms the basis of a literature, that informs all that comes after - and then I will remember it was written in 1860 or in 1937 and I will remember the context, will know what is about to happen, and all of a sudden I find I am dizzied and off-balance.

I think the historical vertigo gets me worst in this general setting precisely because I'm used to measuring time in millions or billions of years. Being abruptly reminded to take a timescale of decades seriously is... something of a perspective shift.