Perhaps you are facing the same problem as a Buridan's ass - an ass caught between two similarly inviting choices.
Morton's fork is similar, but with both choices undesirable.
•What is the context in which the term was originally used? Was is a typically used in chemistry or physics for instance?
The word was originally used in physics.
Sylva Sylvarum, Or, A Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries (1st edition 1627, linked edition printed 1635) says:
Whether there bee any such Resilience in Eccho's, (that is, whether a Man shall heare better, if he stand aside the Body Repercussing, than if he stand where he speaketh, or anywhere in a right Line betweene;) may be tried.
However, the verb form, resile, is older as explained in the New York Times article ON LANGUAGE; WHEN YOU SAY THAT, RESILE (1983):
Resile turns out to be an old word, chiefly in Scottish use, from the Latin resilire , ''to leap back.'' First recorded use was in 1529, in the state papers of Henry VIII, when King Henry said of one of his wives that he wished she ''wold herafter resile and goo back from that.'' In the old days, if the Queen failed to resile when she was told, she lost her head.
•When did its figurative meaning start to become common, was is from the '80s as Google Books appear to suggest? But mainly, what contributed to its usage outside scientific fields?
An early figurative use of "resilience" is in a US House of Representatives anti-slavery speech by Horace Mann, 28 February 1851:
Base as human nature often proves itself to be, it sometimes manifests a divine resilience by which it springs with recuperative energy from its guilty fall.
And an earlier use is in Edwin the Fair: An Historical Drama (1842):
This soul of man, this elemental crasis,
Completed, should present the universe
Abounding in all kinds ; and unto all
One law is common,— that their act and reach
Stretched to the farthest is resilient ever,
And in resilience hath its plenary force
Best Answer
You are reading a transcript of an interview, not an article, and as such the English may not be as polished as a written and edited article. Cristina Alesci (the interviewer) is referring to a light bulb moment, in which an idea or realization is formed, represented in cartoons by a light bulb over the person's head being switched on.