Introduction: Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives

Abstract

Astrobiology and ‘big history’ are both relatively new academic disciplines. Astrobiology is concerned with the evolution and prevalence of life in a cosmic context, while big history aims to integrate human history into the deeper evolutionary history of the Universe. Although there are differences in emphasis, and in the intellectual backgrounds of many of their practitioners, big history and astrobiology share much in common, especially their interdisciplinarity and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives that they both engender. The interdisciplinary perspectives of both subjects have the potential to yield significant academic and scholarly benefits by helping to bridge the intellectual gulfs that have grown between academic disciplines and, perhaps especially, between C.P. Snow’s (1959) “Two Cultures” of the sciences and the humanities. At the same time, the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives inherent in both disciplines may be expected to result in wider benefits to society, not least by enhancing public awareness of our place in the Universe and attendant environmental and socio-political corollaries.