Science in the Mirror of “Big History”

Abstract

“Big History” tries to view the past on the largest possible scales. This paper argues that the wide-angle vision of “Big History” suggests some interesting perspectives on the nature of modern science. First, it suggests that modern science is more than a bag of technological tricks. Within the modern scientific disciplines there lurks a modern creation myth, a general account of origins that can help us better understand our place in time and space. Second, the broad perspective encourages us to see what the modern sciences share with many different kinds of “knowledge systems”. Knowledge systems consist of modifiable “maps of reality” that allow organisms to adapt during their lifetime, rather than at the slower pace of genetic change. Human knowledge systems are unique because language allows humans to construct their maps of reality collectively. So human knowledge, unlike that of all other organisms, can accumulate from generation to generation. That is why human knowledge systems have changed so greatly in the course of human history.