BIG HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY To: William Hardy McNeill: The historian I admire the most in the whole wide world. We remain submerged in a vast evolutionary process that began with the Big Bang (probably) and is heading to an unknown future – a system in which matter and energy evolve, stars form and break apart, the solar system took form and will eventually collapse (but not before life does), and human societies emerged on planet Earth, beginning an evolution whose end is not in sight. (William H. McNeill, The Global Condition (1992), pp. xiv–xv.) FRED SPIER BIG HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication This edition fi rst published 2010 © 2010 Fred Spier Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. 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ISBN 978-1-4443-3421-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Civilization–Philosophy. 2. History–Philosophy. 3. World history–Philosophy. 4. Human evolution. 5. Human ecology. 6. Biocomplexity. 7. Complexity (Philosophy) I. Title. CB19.S679 2010 909–dc22 2009044655 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10.5 on 13pt Minion by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed in Malaysia I 2010 CONTENTS List of Figures viii Preface and Acknowledgments ix Chapter One Introduction to Big History 1 Introduction 1 Studying the Past 2 A Very Short History of Academic History 7 A Short History of Big History 9 A Historical Theory of Everything? 16 Chapter Two General Approach 18 Introduction 18 Matter and Energy 21 Complexity 24 Energy Flows and the Emergence of Complexity 29 The Goldilocks Principle 36 Chapter Three Cosmic Evolution: The Emergence of Simple Forms of Complexity 41 Introduction 41 The Big Bang: No Complexity 42 Recent Issues Concerning the Big Bang Scenario 44 The Radiation Era: The Emergence of Complexity at the Smallest Scales 45 The Matter Era: The Emergence of Complexity at Atomic and Molecular Scales 49 Galaxy Formation: The Emergence of Complexity at Larger Scales 51 The Emergence of Stars 55 Stars as Nuclear Forges 59 vi Contents Chapter Four Our Cosmic Neighborhood: The Emergence of Greater Complexity 62 Introduction 62 The Galactic Habitable Zone 63 The Emergence of Our Cosmic Neighborhood 65 The Solar System Habitable Zone 68 Major Characteristics of Earth 70 Early Inner Planetary History 73 Early Earth History 74 Life Is Very Special 75 The Emergence of Life 78 Chapter Five Life on Earth: The Widening Range of Complexity 82 Life, Energy and Complexity 82 Planetary Energy Flows and Life 88 The Gaia Hypothesis 90 The Emergence of Energy Harvesting from Outside 94 The Emergence of the Biological Food Web 97 The Emergence of Multicellular Organisms 101 The Emergence of Brains and Consciousness 103 The Increase and Expansion of Biological Complexity 105 Conquest of the Land 106 Further Increasing Complexity 108 Chapter Six Early Human History: The Emergence of the Greatest Known Complexity 111 Introduction 111 What Makes Humans Different 112 Energy and Complexity 115 The Emergence of Early Humans 117 Improving Social Coordination 120 Tool Making and Brain Growth 121 Brains and Intestines 124 Fire Control 126 Migration 128 The Rise of Modern Humans 131 Early Religion 136 Chapter Seven Recent Human History: The Development of the Greatest Known Complexity 138 Introduction 138 The Agrarian Revolution 141 Contents vii The Developing Agrarian Regime 146 Social Effects of the Agrarian Revolution 149 The Emergence of Agrarian Religions 151 Increasing Agricultural Complexity and Declining Untamed Complexity 153 Early State Formation 156 The Emergence of Big States 160 The Emergence of Moral Religions 162 Energy and Complexity in State Societies 163 The First Wave of Globalization 168 Industrialization: The Second Wave of Globalization 173 Informatization: The Third Wave of Globalization 180 Energy, Complexity and Goldilocks Circumstances 183 Chapter Eight Facing the Future 189 Introduction 189 A Very Short Overview of the Long Future of the Universe 191 The Future of Earth and Life 192 The Future of Humanity 193 The Availability of Matter and Energy 196 Exhaustion of Critical Resources and Growing Entropy 200 Will Humans Migrate to Other Planets? 202 Final Words 203 Appendix A Short Time Line of Big History 206 Notes 208 Bibliography 239 Index 262 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Alexander von Humboldt, painted by Friedrich Georg Weitsch in 1806. (Source: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) 11 Figure 2.1: Goldilocks falling from a tree. Apparently, she has overstepped her boundaries. Soon, her complexity will be damaged as a result of the impact caused by gravitational energy . (Drawing by Giulia Spier, 4 years old) 38 Figure 3.1: The variation in the cosmic background radiation provides evidence for the fi rst emergence of greater complexity. (Source: NASA) 52 Figure 4.1: The solar system habitable zone, orbits of planets not drawn to scale. (Source: NASA) 70 Figure 5.1: Earth as seen by the astronauts of Apollo 17. The effects of geothermal and solar energy are clearly visible, including the shape of the continents and the location of deserts, which contribute to defi ne the Goldilocks circumstances for life. (Source: NASA) 89 Figure 6.1: A human effort to recreate the African savanna elsewhere on the planet, Amsterdam, Westerpark, winter 1995 – 6. (Photograph by the author) 130 Figure 7.1: The amazing expansion of human control over matter and energy during the twentieth century: the Apollo 8 astronauts during the roll - out of the Saturn V rocket that would propel them into lunar orbit and back, fall 1968. (Source: NASA) 183 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The biggest philosophy, foundation -shaking impression was seeing the small- ness of the Earth. … Even the pictures don ’ t do it justice, because they always have this frame around them. But when you … put your eyeball to the window of the spacecraft, you can see essentially half of the universe. … That ’ s a lot more black and a lot more universe than ever comes through a framed picture. … It ’ s not how small the Earth was, it ’ s just how big every- thing else was. (Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders in Chaikin & Kohl (2009) , p. 158.) This book is about big history, the approach to history in which the human past is placed within the framework of cosmic history, from the beginning of the universe up until life on Earth today. This book offers a fresh theoretical approach to big history that, I hope, will provide a better understanding not only of the past but also of the major challenges humanity will be facing in the near future. My search for a theory underlying big history has been motivated by a deep concern about what humans have been doing to our living conditions on planet Earth. My environmental preoccupation, in its turn, came as a direct result of the Apollo moon fl ights during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The mission that left the most enduring impression took place in December of 1968, when Apollo 8 went to the moon for the fi rst time and orbited our celestial companion 10 times before returning to Earth. In the Netherlands, I watched their exciting black - and - white live transmissions from space, while snapping pictures with my photo camera mounted on a tripod in front of our television set. This was before the days of home video recorders or any other devices that could record television pictures. I felt that I was witnessing events of great importance, while I was not certain whether these images would be preserved or be available to me. I took pictures of the launch; of the fi rst live broadcast from space, which included the fi rst crude images of Earth; and of the moon ’ s surface as seen from lunar orbit.