Introduction to the Special Issue on Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective

Ian Crawford

doi:10.22339/jbh.v3i3.3310

Abstract

Introduction to the Special Issue on Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective

Highlights

Introduction to the Special Issue onExpanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective Ian A
Big history and astrobiology are two relatively new academic disciplines, the former aiming to integrate human history with the wider history of the universe, and the latter searching for life elsewhere in that universe
These two disciplines share much in common, especially their interdisciplinarity and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives that they both engender. To investigate their wider societal implications, a one-day meeting on the theme of ‘Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective’ was held on 19 July 2018 under the auspices of the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University.[1]. This special issue of the Journal of Big History contains the peer-reviewed versions of seven papers presented at that meeting, together with three additional papers that were inspired by the theme of the meeting

Summary

Introduction

Introduction to the Special Issue onExpanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History, and the Social and Intellectual Benefits of the Cosmic Perspective Ian A. Big history and astrobiology are two relatively new academic disciplines, the former aiming to integrate human history with the wider history of the universe, and the latter searching for life elsewhere in that universe.

Results

Conclusion