Big History

So I'm (finally) almost through Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian. Outstanding. Would love to hear from others who have read works of the new "Big History" genre and what it means to them, as well as recommendations for other relevant works in the genre.

I had certainly never heard of "Big History" until this very moment. Do you consider John McPhee with a collection like Annals of the Former World a precursor of the genre? Honestly, McPhee is big enough and bigger than I can handle. (And why are the touchstones showing up in my right margin now but not in my text???)

I've read some McPhee but I don't know if his stuff can be related to this; perhaps.

Big history as a genre proceeds by postulating that human history should rightly begin to be studied long before humans actually existed on the globe. Christian in "Maps of Time" starts with the Big Bank 13+ billion years ago. Flannery in The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples starts with the asteoid impact 65 million years. Flannery's book was the first Big History I read, before i knew what Big History was.

Charles Mann, author of 1491 -- which is related to Big History on a more defined timescale I suppose -- recommended the Christian book to me.

Read "Maps of Time" Lizzie. You will not regret it.

PS Touchstones show up if you use the brackets, but they don't always find the right book

>2 LizzieD:
LizzieD (and glad to have you here!) I had not thought about it before, but I think you are right on the mark! I love McPhee, and what he does in incorporating geologic history with later events strikes me as very much in the spirit of Big History.

Personally, I find it aesthetically pleasing to start with the beginnings of the universe, but I can live with the paleolithic as well!

**sigh**

I want this. I want the article(s) and I want a subscription.

http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/history/article_view?article_id=hico_ar...

The article that caught my eye was the one by Goffart: "Rome's Final Conquest: The Barbarians"

BUT if you glance down you'll see another 'big picture' article entitled: "Medieval Europe and the World: Why Medievalists Should Also Be World Historians"

====

It's hell to be poor :(

It is also as Theofilo Ruiz was before he wanted medievalists to be world historians:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/1998/02/27/6133
;-)

The man has an interesting history, Marieke. I wonder if his writing style is humorous as well. I'll have to check Illiad later.

This is not comprehensive, but for those who are not famiar with "Big History" this is a good summary in standard wiki style:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History

I own the Bill Bryson Big History book A Short History of Nearly Everything but have not read it yet.

I read the Bryson. It seems "in the spirit of", but folksy and far from academic. It was a pleasant frolic, but not especially groundbreaking.

Bryson wasn't really history - at least not much as is usually thought of as involving humans. It's more a quick tour through more or less current physics, with bits of biology and chemisty thrown in. There's lots of personal asides about specific individuals but they are irrelvant to the points being made. And generally any dsicoveries they made were also being persued by others at the same time.

I think big history goes to far - can't see the wood for the forest maybe. Yes the process of formation of the earth does impact on how some cultures arrise in depending on what mineral and resources are distributed in their area, but that's not a very fine toothed comb for examining specific events.

>10 reading_fox:
Yes, Bryson was a popular "Quick, I'll give you an overview of what we know about all kinds of stuff." He's not interested in history.

That is probably why I stocked my library with the Bryson book but never actually got around to it.

I think Big History is great. My first experience was the Flannery book "The Eternal Frontier" which catapults the reader into the genre with the asteroid impact on the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. It wasn't until that moment that I thought of history as extending back beyond "Lucy." Christian's "Maps of Time" starts with the Big Bang and when it is done well -- and oh boy does Christian do it well -- it puts everything else that followed in a perspective that changes the way you "sight" your historical studies.

Hey, I have spent the last two years focusing my own independent study largely upon the 5th century Mediterranean World with a primary focus on Hellenic culture. That's pretty circumscribed and has little to do with Big History, except for the fact that Big History really helped me place that century or so in the overall pictures. So neither the forest nor the trees need to obscure one from the other.

Coincidently I have just started Evolution which is distinctly fiction - but very much personalised big history too. At less than a quarter of the way through it's probably too early to say, but so far I'd recommend it as worth reading. Even if it's annoying anthromorphic at times.

>14 stellarexplorer:
Liked Evolution as an imagining of evolutionary history by a knowledgeable fiction writer, but was less happy with it as fiction per se. I thought it had trouble maintaining a coherent plot line because of the way it moved through different characters over time, which was a distraction. Epics can be challenging that way.

I started Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History today. I find it very exciting that people are starting to formalize the casual sense of a modern, scientific view of the universe that has been around for many decades, and especially to think of this in terms of a contemporary comprehensive creation myth. Reading the introduction, I had the feeling of familiarity: this is an articulating of something I have always done in my own thinking from the time I was a small child.

I have clear memories at age 4 and on of asking what is this universe into which I have been born? It was a crucial part of growing up to learn about the world and the universe at large, and to construct a model of what our intellectual strivings have led us to believe about these things. Me, my family, my street, my community, state, country, planet, solar system, galaxy, universe -- this way of organizing things was vital to my making sense of existence as a child.

And later, to see parallels between things that were very different and yet similar. That so many things contain some kind of record of their own history. Individual human memories. Collective memories or historical reconstructions. The rocks that tell a story of the distant past. The DNA of species. The cosmos itself, so clearly displaying a record of the past, as the electromagnetic radiation that reaches us from distant space left its place of origin long, long ago.

I may now have to reorganize my library a bit. I have long begun my history section with the earliest hominid evolution books. But now I may need to take my cosmology, natural history and geology books and integrate them into the schema!

Glad you started it, man! I have been reading it very slowly (deliberately) because it is so dense with material. I think I'm going to get the Teaching Company version of Christian's university course, as well, so I can listen to it as lectures in the car and revisit what I read for greater comprehension and even more thought-provoking ideas. As you know, I'm a big fan.

Thanks for the invite, Garp83! Right now I have no idea what Big History is about (and I must admit, my interest is mainly in decidedly 'small history' - social history in particular) but it sounds interesting and I'm going to keep reading until I know more about it. As someone who is passionate about Greece, both ancient and modern, I know I'm going to find a lot of interesting stuff in this group.

welcome booksloth! look forward to your commentaries . . .

It was a crucial part of growing up to learn about the world and the universe at large, and to construct a model of what our intellectual strivings have led us to believe about these things. Me, my family, my street, my community, state, country, planet, solar system, galaxy, universe -- this way of organizing things was vital to my making sense of existence as a child.

Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of my son. Only he can't believe there is no other galaxy out there where the Star Wars characters really lives, and he wants to go there.

I think that's heart-warming. There is hope for humanity! ;-)
(He knows it's only a story, but once I had told him every star is a sun no way he was going to accept life could only exist on one planet in this vast universe).

>19 Busifer:
Your boy sounds very astute, Busifer!

>15 stellarexplorer:
I just started Maps of Time yesterday. Very interesting so for!

I'm reading Big History and have The Eternal Frontier and Maps of Time ready to go. Last year I read Before the Dawn, which I loved.

Auntmarg -- what did you think of "Big History"?

>23 Garp83:

I've read only a couple of chapters but I'm impressed with it. The author plucks the important points of each topic and strings them together to show interesting connections between eras. What surprises me is that what's basically an overview works so well.

>22 auntmarge64:
Glad to have someone who has read so many of the texts that motivated this thread!

>25 stellarexplorer:

Well, I'd like to be able to say I've read all those, but I've finished only one, am reading a second, and have the other two ready to be read.....

I read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and thought it was absolutely fantastic. I also very much enjoyed Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything especially because of the personal stories he blends into it - to me it's fascinating how they discovered all these things. Especially the stories about people travelling to all over the world trying to track the Venus-transit (and then getting stuck on the sea or having a cloud in front of the sun...).

I never heard of Big History until I saw this thread: sounds very interesting! I'd love to hear more about the books already mentioned to see which one I should order next :)

Celia -- Before the Dawn is a great bookend to Guns, Germs and Steel because Diamond is all about environmental first causes and Wade is all about genetic ones, so they complement each other. Wade even takes on Diamond in the pages of his book.

And of course you have heard me rave more than once about Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History -- if you are interested in the genre, this is the bible, so to speak.

Thanks Garp - that indeed sounds very interesting! Hopefully I'll be able to read those two soon :)

Moving along in my read. I will have much to say at some point.

Maps of Time was the textbook David wrote for his course at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is designed to be read one chapter per week over a 13 week semester, complimented by lectures with powerpoints and a tutorial which uses the books listed in the further reading section at the end of each chapter. From a teaching perspective the book is marvellous, and I will use it when I finally convince one of the universities in my home town to employ me to teach it!

The other co-founder of Big history is the Dutch scholar, Fred Spiers. He has also written a book, much shorter and less detailed, but thought provoking in the way he tries to link the cosmic, the biological and the human-cultural stories - The Structure of Big History. A more science based approach, with less emphasis on the human - cultural side of the strory has been developed by the Harvard astronomer Eric Chaissson in three books Cosmic Dawn, Cosmic Evolution: Rise of Complexity in Nature and The Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos. (Sorry no touchstones). All three are excellent, though the first is somewhat dated now in data. Bryson's work is excellent for showing just how fragmented, small and contentious the actual data behind the confident assertions really are, and also as a salutory reminder that scientific explanations, like all other human intellectual products, are contentious, much argued over, and can be accepted or rejected for a whole bunch of social, personal and / or political reasons that have nothing to do with the actual content of the interpretation. Science, like philsophy, literature, history or anything else, is a social product.

Diamond's book is also excellent, although I would classify it as deep history, not big history. The latter includes the cosmic dimension of the formation of the universe, the solar system and the earth. Diamond's work starts with the earth in existence with a recognisable geography and with the path of life and evolution well and truly started. As such he is elucidating the geographical and ecological, evolutionary genetic and evolutionary psychological inputs into human cultural and social evolution.

In an interesting twist on the traditional use of the terms, all these authors are producing a historical materialism. Spiers, Christian and Chaisson are producing various dialectical materialisms (Chaisson even uses that term). And in that case, we need to round out the picture by going back to the granddaddy of dialectical materialism, Friedrich Engels, The Dialectics of Nature!

For Big History to work, the narrator must have a strong theme that can link the various scales and domains together. Christian and Chaisson find this in complexity, althhough the latter also extends the concept of evolution into the physical universe of pre life. But without this thematic thread, students are faced with a bewildering array of data that seems to bear no relation to each other and leaves them unsure as to what the purpose of the program is. The problem of course is that any such strong theme is a subjective, personal interpretation, without any real supporting evidence, and can easily slide into a teleology or speculation. I find Big History exciting - but then I belong to the 'wierd' fringe of historians (David Christian's own terms) - but most of my colleagues are dubious, unimpressed and dowright dismissive.

Thanks Cedric for your erudite analysis of Big History and its goals. I take it you know Christian?

I bought his Teaching Company course so I'll get a chance to experience his lectures after reading the book, which I'm sure will go a long way towards reinforcing the dense material.

My first Big History was Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples by Flannery -- have you read that?

Beyond what you've referenced above, is there anything else out there as good as Christian's book?

I finished Maps of Time last night. I want to thank you all. I would never have found it, much less read it, without this group. I think it's an important work.

As an aside, let me mention how much I appreciated how well the book was made. Lately I've had to return hard cover books that broke in pieces after (or during) one reading. The University of California Press put out a large paperback that is well designed; it opens readily, does not break, and has a handsome look. I wish we saw more books like this.

Jennie, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I own the trade paper rather than the hardcover, so I can't praise the binding the way you do. I'll let you know what i think of the Teaching Company course once I get to it -- got to finish "The Greek & Persian Wars" first

The binding that Jennie is praising is a "large paperback", maybe the same as the "trade paper" you have?

Any paperback that isn't the mass market size (pocket book to some) is a "trade" paperback. I'm told that any print run can have a few wonky books, regardless of the type of binding.

I guess that I had not known that we are distinguished from the lemurs by our fingernails. There is a new early common ancestor of apes and monkeys, and unless I've read it wrong, lemurs have claws.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519104643.htm

Robert

#32

Garp83,

Yes I have met David personally, a very affable scholar and a man (uncharacteristically for historians) very concerend with big questions. I think for him Big History has a sort of unstated spiritual assumption, a sort of why are we here dimension. He is originally a Russian specialist, who once pronounced (with tongue in cheek) the half joking, half provocative idea that the Russian Revolution could be put down to an interruption in the supply of vodka! He has produced an excellent survey history of what he calls Inner Asia - the lands from Muscovy to Manchuria, which stops about the 15th century. When I asked him two years ago when the second volume would come out he just grimaced, so I am not hopeful!

I haven't read the Flannery you mention, although I have seen it on the shelves. I have read his companion environmental history of Australia The Future Eaters, which is just awesome!

As to others, not much more than what I have mentioned in the Big History, ie. history of the universe and of humanity, line. In terms of long scale environmental history though, there is Clive Pointing A Green History of the World, and also John McNeill Something New Under the SUn. An oldie but a goodie is William H McNeill Plagues and People, with more of a disease focus. Jared Diamond has been mentioned a lot in this group. Also Alfred Cosby Ecological Imperialism and The Columbian Exchange are well worth a look. Sometime in the next two years look out for a book from the Berkeley University Press by Jason Moore, with a title something along the lines of Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism. It will be a cracker!

Hope this helps.

Thanks cedric. The Future Eaters sounds quite promising. The Flannery book on North America was outstanding!

Oh! That Christian! We used his A history of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, vol. I: Inner Eurasia from prehistory to the Mongol Empire for a class I took last semester. We only read that first 300 pages and it did not make much of an impression on me. I honestly have no opinion on the book. The other material was very good, Herodotus on the Scythians, Ssu-ma Ch’ien on the Hsiung-nu, transcripts from Turkic steles from the 9th century, The Secret History of the Mongols so he had some tough competition. I did keep the book with the intention of rereading it later.

Have recently obtained 'The "Times" Complete History of the World' published by The Times of London newspaper. It is in it's seventh edition since 1978, using special maps to illustrate Eras of regions during "Interesting Times'. Try comparing this with Maps of Time for further enlightenment.

big history is surely as old as the bible or any creation story, just now it has science to give it a different narrative.
braudel and the long duree must be seen as a modern precursor to the whole idea.
as for tim flannery, when i first read future eaters he had me but as the years have gone by he seems to have been exposed as somewhat sliphod in his facts and his prognoses for the future- but then again who hasnt been wrong when predicting that slippery concept?

Argument that early human culture and innovation emerged only with sufficient population density:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090604-human-behavior-evolved.html

I don't have access to the actual paper. Assuming they did in fact use the newly available genetic data on populations for the last 50,000 years, this may be part of the beginnings of the practical use of that material to generate new theories of human cultural development.

Thanks for posting that link - very interesting!

I have recently been to New Mexico in the US and visited Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde etc. Fascinating. I'm reading Ancient peoples of the American south-west by Stephen Plog, which details the development of culture over time in that area. It starts with initial hunting-gathering with low population densities, then the development into village-life with partly agriculture and then up to the more complex societies that built the Great Houses at Chaco and were dependent on each other for food etc. Very interesting and clear story of the development of culture in these areas.

(Just a note to thank this group for tempting me to read Guns, Germs, and Steel. I found almost everything about it enjoyable, and put it down feeling that the rest of us were dummies for not having put together his train of thought. I also spent a lot of my reading time looking forward to the next I didn't know that! moment. Now on to Maps of Time!)

Well, I haven't gotten to Maps of Time yet although it's not very far from the top of Mt. Bookpile. Meanwhile, if anybody ever has an opportunity to ask David Christian whether he read Gravity's Rainbow at an impressionable age, go for it. On page 612 in my edition, which is where I am and why I haven't gotten to *MoT* yet, I find:
"But Felipe has come to see, as those who are not Sentient Rocksters seldom do, that history as it's been laid on the world is only a fraction, an outward-and-visible fraction. That we must also look to the untold, to the silence around us, to the passage of the next rock we notice - to its aeons of history under the long and female persistence of water and air ----down to the lowland where your paths, human and mineral, are most likely to cross."
O.K. that's not exactly big history, but it's suggestive, don't you think?

great quote! I haven't read Gravity's Rainbow -- do you recommend it?

I dont kow if LizzieD does, but I certainly do. It has been many years since I read it and I dont remember that quote, but it is an excellent book.