Big History
[23][24] Conventional history typically begins with the invention of writing, and is limited to past events relating directly to the human race.
Big Historians point out that this limits study to the past 5,000 years and neglects the much longer time when humans existed on Earth.
[25] Big History covers the formation of the universe, stars, and galaxies, and includes the beginning of life as well as the period of several hundred thousand years when humans were hunter-gatherers.
[26] An account in The Boston Globe describes what it polemically asserts to be the conventional "history" view: Early humans were slump-shouldered, slope-browed, hairy brutes.
"[2] It uses more kinds of evidence than the standard historical written records, such as fossils, tools, household items, pictures, structures, ecological changes and genetic variations.
"[28] Another criticism of Big History made by associate professor Ian Hesketh, is that it mixes up science disciplines using holistic views that are very close to mythic or religious approaches, without mentioning this in its narrative.
David Christian believes such "radical shifts in perspective" will yield "new insights into familiar historical problems, from the nature/nurture debate to environmental history to the fundamental nature of change itself.
Cosmic evolution is an intellectual framework that offers a grand synthesis of the many varied changes in the assembly and composition of radiation, matter, and life throughout the history of the universe.
Early modern speculation about cosmic evolution began more than a century ago, including the broad insights of Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Lawrence Henderson.
Only in the mid-20th century was the cosmic-evolutionary scenario articulated as a research paradigm to include empirical studies of galaxies, stars, planets, and life—in short, an expansive agenda that combines physical, biological, and cultural evolution.
Harlow Shapley widely articulated the idea of cosmic evolution (often calling it "cosmography") in public venues at mid-century,[32] and NASA embraced it in the late 20th century as part of its more limited astrobiology program.
Carl Sagan,[33] Eric Chaisson,[34] Hubert Reeves,[35] Erich Jantsch,[36] and Preston Cloud,[37] among others, extensively championed cosmic evolution at roughly the same time around 1980.
Yet another telling of the Big-Bang-to-humankind story is one that emphasizes the earlier universe, particularly the growth of particles, galaxies, and large-scale cosmic structure, such as in physical cosmology.
[53] Advances in particular sciences such as archaeology, gene mapping, and evolutionary ecology have enabled historians to gain new insights into the early origins of humans, despite the lack of written sources.
[2] A book by Daniel Lord Smail in 2008 suggested that history was a continuing process of humans learning to self-modify our mental states by using stimulants such as coffee and tobacco, as well as other means such as religious rites or romance novels.
[8][60] It was described in one account: ChronoZoom splays out the entirety of cosmic history in a web browser, where users can click into different epochs to learn about the events that have culminated to bring us to where we are today—in my case, sitting in an office chair writing about space.
[62] Each episode centered on a major Big History topic such as salt, mountains, cold, flight, water, meteors and megastructures.
[19] In a sense, Darwin's theory of evolution was, in itself, an attempt to explain a biological phenomenon by examining longer term cause-and-effect processes.
Later, Eric Chaisson explored the subject of cosmic evolution quantitatively in terms of energy rate density, and the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote Cosmos.
[19] The French historian Fernand Braudel examined daily life with investigations of "large-scale historical forces like geology and climate".
Field and Eric Chaisson started synthesizing knowledge to form a "science-based history of everything", although each of these scholars emphasized somewhat their own particular specializations in their courses and books.
[19] In 1980, the Austrian philosopher Erich Jantsch wrote The Self-Organizing Universe which viewed history in terms of what he called "process structures".
His analysis did not begin with the Big Bang, but his chapter "Foundations of History" explored the influences of large-scale geological and astronomical forces over a broad time period.
In particular, it really put the sciences in an interesting historical context and explained how they apply to a lot of contemporary concerns.By 2002, a dozen college courses on Big History had sprung up around the world.
[67] In 2010, Dominican University of California launched the world's first Big History program to be required of all first-year students, as part of the school's general education track.
Explore the inevitable question of what it means to be human and our momentous role in shaping possible futures for our planet.The Dominican faculty's approach is to synthesize the disparate threads of Big History thought, in order to teach the content, develop critical thinking and writing skills, and prepare students to wrestle with the philosophical implications of the Big History metanarrative.
[70] Barry Rodrigue, at the University of Southern Maine, established the first general education course and the first online version, which has drawn students from around the world.
The University of Queensland has since taken an active stance against big history, with Associate Professor Ian Hesketh being a world-leading critic.
In 2012, one report suggested that Big History was being practiced as a "coherent form of research and teaching" by hundreds of academics from different disciplines.
An education project founded by philanthropist Bill Gates from his personal funds was launched in Australia and the United States, to offer a free online version of the course to high school students.
