Abstract
Big History is ideally positioned to act as a major driver of social change through the promotion of a rigorous and accessible scientific origin story. This origin story appeals to our species’ universal predilection for storytelling and unifies key scientific theories across disciplines within a single, coherent narrative. Below, I identify two interrelated problems that Big History can help combat: suboptimal cultural knowledge priorities, and scientific illiteracy. I then explore how Big History can be part of the solution, with reference to my own experience teaching Big History in Australia. I argue that if taught globally and promoted as a core part of the assumed knowledge of every culture, Big History could help facilitate a much-needed shift towards a more enlightened, rational, scientifically literate, and future conscious society. This chapter was originally published in the Journal of Big History, Vol. III(3), pp. 37–45 (2019).
Highlights
Contemplating the role of Big History in the social sphere is a crucial and ongoing task for big historians and one that must, at this early stage in the evolution of this academic culture, make reference to subjective opinions and anecdotal experiences
While Big History is unlikely to be a panacea for the world’s ills, this paper is an argument for why we should think big when it comes to what we can achieve as teachers and researchers of this modern, scientific origin story
What could possibly be more important than for most human beings to understand on a deep evolutionary level where we come from, how we have evolved, what kinds of cognitive biases we are still saddled with, and how we fit into a larger evolutionary framework of physical, chemical, biological, cultural and technological evolution? It should be a universal cultural expectation that human general knowledge includes a knowledge of the age of the universe and the Earth, how stars and planets formed, continental drift, natural and sexual selection, the laws of thermodynamics, and how profoundly nonhuman actors like asteroids, pathogens and ice ages have shaped the course of planetary and biological evolution. This macro-evolutionary history gives us the context to comprehend how and why humans have become a major driver of planetary evolution and accelerating change in the past two hundred and fifty years (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000; Steffen et al 2015; Zalasiewicz 2011)
Summary
Contemplating the role of Big History in the social sphere is a crucial and ongoing task for big historians and one that must, at this early stage in the evolution of this academic culture, make reference to subjective opinions and anecdotal experiences. I hope this paper, and the others that appear in this collection, helps to start a conversation in the Big History community about our ongoing research, teaching and social outreach objectives. While Big History is unlikely to be a panacea for the world’s ills, this paper is an argument for why we should think big when it comes to what we can achieve as teachers and researchers of this modern, scientific origin story. We should not underestimate the potential for a cultural shift in modern knowledge priorities to have major impacts down the line, perhaps even extending to our species’ odds of ongoing survival
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