Abstract
Nature's many varied complex systems—including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society—are islands of order within the increasingly disordered Universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological, or cultural evolution, which together comprise the grander interdisciplinary subject of cosmic evolution. A wealth of observational data supports the hypothesis that increasingly complex systems evolve unceasingly, uncaringly, and unpredictably from big bang to humankind. These are global history greatly extended, big history with a scientific basis, and natural history broadly portrayed across ∼14 billion years of time. Human beings and our cultural inventions are not special, unique, or apart from Nature; rather, we are an integral part of a universal evolutionary process connecting all such complex systems throughout space and time. Such evolution writ large has significant potential to unify the natural sciences into a holistic understanding of who we are and whence we came. No new science (beyond frontier, nonequilibrium thermodynamics) is needed to describe cosmic evolution's major milestones at a deep and empirical level. Quantitative models and experimental tests imply that a remarkable simplicity underlies the emergence and growth of complexity for a wide spectrum of known and diverse systems. Energy is a principal facilitator of the rising complexity of ordered systems within the expanding Universe; energy flows are as central to life and society as they are to stars and galaxies. In particular, energy rate density—contrasting with information content or entropy production—is an objective metric suitable to gauge relative degrees of complexity among a hierarchy of widely assorted systems observed throughout the material Universe. Operationally, those systems capable of utilizing optimum amounts of energy tend to survive, and those that cannot are nonrandomly eliminated.
Highlights
For many years, my scientific research has explored natural science broadly yet deeply, striving to place humanity into a cosmological framework
All brain values fall within a narrow range of Φm values between lower biological systems and higher cultural ones
I do so largely in order to skirt the vagueness of social studies while embracing once again empirical-based energy flow as a driver of cultural evolution
Summary
My scientific research has explored natural science broadly yet deeply, striving to place humanity into a cosmological framework. Cosmic evolutionists regard humankind as a miniscule segment of an extraordinarily lengthy story, a tiny strand that enters only in the most recent ∼0.01% of the story to date—akin to an uber-movie of 14 billion years that plays linearly for 14 minutes, yet in which humankind appears well within the last second of the film [19] Even so, it is the scientifically oriented cosmic-evolutionary scenario described below that technically bolsters the humanistically oriented big history enterprise with rigorous, quantitative natural science. In this empirical analysis of big history per se, is a limited examination of some of the many salient evolutionary events that gave rise to increasingly complex systems along an aimless, meandering path leading eventually and remarkably to humankind on Earth
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