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What Is Big History? David Christian

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What Is Big History? David Christian The Journal of Big History (JBH) ISSN 2475-3610 Editor: Lowell Gustafson (Villanova University) Associate Editor: Cynthia Brown (emerita, Dominican University of California) Assistant Editor: Esther Quaedackers (University of Amsterdam) Book Review Co-editors Cynthia Brown (emerita, Dominican University of California) John Mears (Southern Methodist University) Editorial Board Mojgan Behmand (Dominican University of California) Craig Benjamin (Grand Valley State University) David Christian (Macquarie University) Andrey Korotayev (Moscow State University) Johnathan Markley (University of California, Fullerton) BarryLucy Bennison Rodrigue Laffitte (Eurasian (North Center Carolina for Macrohistory, State University) Russian Academy of Sciences) Fred Spier (University of Amsterdam) Joseph Voros (Swinburne University of Technology) Sun Yue (Capital Normal University) JBH, the journal of the International Big History Association (IBHA), is published on line and is accessible to members of the IBHA. The IBHA also publishes its bulletin, Origins. The bulletin contains members’ accounts of their activities and views, announcements of conferences and meetings of interest, and other communication of interest to IBHA members. We encourage readers of the JBH to send letters and responses to jbh@ .org or to the address below: Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies Grand Valley State University bighistory 1 Campus Drive Allendale MI 49401-9403 http:// .org/ 616-331-8035 bighistory Journal of Big History (JBH) The views and opinions expressed in JBH are not necessarily those of the IBHA Board. JBHPlease reserves visit journalofbighistory.org the right to accept, reject; please or edit submit any materialmanuscripts submitted and other for publication. material to at [email protected]. The IBHA appreciates its members for their participation in the IBHA. Membership dues all go towards the administration of the association, but do not by themselves cover our costs. The only paid position is a part time administrative assistant. Other costs are for our website and for the JBH, for example. Please consider a tax deductible (in the US) gift to our 501(C)3 and please consider remembering the IBHA in your will. Journal of Big History Volume I Number 1 http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v1i1 Contents Welcome to the JBH Book Reviews Lowell Gustafson ............... 1 Edward O. Wilson. Articles The Meaning of Human Existence. Reviewed by David Blanks ........... 59 What is Big History? David Christian .............. 4 Ed Yong. I Contain Multitudes: The On the pursuit of academic Microbes Within Us and a research across all the Grander View of Life. disciplines Reviewed by Fred Spier ........... 63 A Little Big History of Iberian ........... 20 SiddharthaLucy Mukherjee. Bennison Laffitte Gold: How Earth processes The Gene: An Intimate History. concentrated the precious metal Reviewed by Jordan Lieser ........... 66 that played a critical role in the history of Spain and Portugal Marvin Harris. Olga García-Moreno Cultural Materialism: The Luís Erick Aguirre-Palafox Struggle for a Science of Culture. Walter Álvarez Reviewed by William Hawley ........... 40 Cynthia Stokes Brown ........... 68 Walter Álvarez. A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves. Reviewed by J. Daniel May ........... 70 Note on Cover Art Work .............................. 72 Welcome to the Journal of Big History Lowell Gustafson Villanova University Journal of Big History Welcome to the first issue of the In the 1970’s scholars from many disciplines . The International Big History Association began piecing together an evidence-based introduces this new journal to take the most narrative that began – as best as we know now – recent step towards advancing the field of big 13.8 billion years ago. We are able to trace this history. Beginning the journal has been seven account from almost immediately after the big years in the making. bang, to the emergence of protons and neutrons each from three quarks, the formation of hydrogen In 2010, Walter Álvarez, the renowned geologist, and helium atoms 380,000 years later, the first led a seminar held at the Osservatorio Geologico di stars and galaxies, the formation of chemicals, Coldigioco (Geological Observatory of Coldigioco). supernovae, the accretion of Earth 4.5672 billion He brought a small group of big historians just years ago, the first living organisms within a few outside of Gubio, Italy, to one of the places where hundred million years of that, the great increase there is a thin line of iridium in a mountain side. in complexity of life forms, the eventual evolution This iridium provides evidence that tells us about of humans about 200,000 years ago, and the the end of the non-avian dinosaurs 65 million development of increasingly complex social, years ago and the opening for mammals to evolve economic, and political cultures over the past into a variety of species, including humans. Back 12,000 years. On this evidence we can project at Coldigioco, Álvarez also explained how those possible scenarios of the future. same mountains had greatly influenced Italian and European history and culture. He demonstrated No one person could possibly master all the fields how the human past is embedded in a much necessary to produce this achievement. Only by longer global and universal past. working together, learning from each other, and building on earlier work could scholars from many By 2010 many scholars worldwide shared a disciplines start to connect the dots among the passion for big history. Scientists, humanists, and disciplines. social scientists felt a need to form a professional organization in order to structure future Universities have long been dedicated to the discussions and investigations. They recognized pursuit of a universe of knowledge. Yet the many the importance and the difficulties of a highly disciplines that exist within universities and the interdisciplinary field whose purpose was to many subfields that exist in each discipline do not investigate the integrated history of the cosmos, yet all fit together neatly. Often a discipline, or a Earth, life, and humanity, using the best available subfield, tries to build impenetrable walls around empirical evidence and scholarly methods. The itself, protecting its own isolation, and budget outcome of the meeting in Italy was the founding lines. Academic silos are sometimes as resistant of the International Big History Association to forming connections with each other as protons (IBHA). are to each other in the absence of sufficient pressure. Plans began immediately to organize conferences where big historians could share and discuss Still, some scholars continue to forge intellectual their findings with each other. Since 2010 IBHA relationships and build a coherent account of the has organized three conferences, with a fourth entire known past. Marcelo Gleiser, professor of scheduled for 2018, and has published a regular physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, uses bulletin. These initiatives aimed at developing the the analogy of a painstakingly constructed island still new field of big history. of knowledge whose shoreline borders on what Volume I Number 1 Page 1 Welcome to the JBH we do not yet know or understand. The analogy when it did? Can we find evidence for other brings to mind the island continent of Australia, universes, or fundamentally different kinds of where the new field was named by David Christian reality than exist in this universe? What is nature at Macquarie University a quarter of a century ago. if we cannot observe formative parts of it without that observation changing them? What do the Gleiser’s analogy of an island of knowledge smallest components of our own universe tell us includes the efforts by many people to increase the about the nature from which we have emerged size of the island by making intellectual advances. and that sustains us for now? Exactly how did life The human island of knowledge has increased originate? over the past millennia, centuries, decades, and years. With this in mind, it is fitting that one of How can we connect what we do know to provide the main centers of big history has been at the a better account of where we have come from University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, with and who we are now? Why does complexity its history of forming its own land from the sea sometimes develop, while often it does not? beyond itself through the ingenuity and effort of Some of the hydrogen and helium that floated its own people. in unimaginably huge clouds soon after the Big Bang became stars, Earth, single cells, mammals, Rather than providing the intellectual vision for and finally us. The 100 billion neurons with their a single island of knowledge, universities are trillion synapses make each of our brains the most sometimes sites for largely separate disciplines complex matter in the universe of which we know. and departments. Each scholar lives on one of But huge clouds of the simplest elements remain. a number of islands that are barely within sight Unimaginable numbers of single cell organisms of each other. The expertise of disciplines and continue to survive perfectly well without any intellectual focus on specific issues are without Ourincrease complex in their brains structural have permitted complexity. – and have been doubt highly valuable. They have produced the stimulated by – the increasingly complex relationships data from which big history has emerged. Each among humans in kinship groups, villages, cities, discipline offers its own sets of analyses and empires and nations, and global or human structures. understandings. But by themselves, none of them Yet, earlier and simpler compositions often continue, could construct the comprehensive narrative that and more complex ones often return to simpler ones. they can together. Filling in the spaces between In recent times, we have seen regional and global the islands of knowledge, connecting each of them, networks being challenged by populist ones which and pushing out their borders into the unknown, exhibit properties that sometimes seem similar to are no easy tasks.
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