The Story of Big History

Abstract

Consilience has long been the dream of many scientific thinkers, best expressed by the desire for a unified theory that could explain essentially everything. Such a desire is based on the assumption that there is a general unity that underlies the various branches of science, a unity that should be expressed by a simple and elegant law of nature. “Best of all would be if underpinning this scheme,” the astrophysicist Paul Davies explained in regard to a universal theory of physics, “there was some sort of basic physical principle that bestowed upon it a credibility and elegance, thus commending it to us on aesthetic as well as scientific grounds.” Ideally such a theory would be best expressed in a “mathematical scheme,” one that could be represented by a single and simple “formula compact enough to wear on your T-shirt.” And even better would be if such a theory could be extended to include not just the natural sciences but the humanities as well. Currently, a group of historians is claiming that it might be history that provides the framework for a scientific and evolutionary account of everything. Big History, so named by its foremost practitioner, David Christian, seeks to unite the two cultures under the framework of an elegant story of the universe, a history, in the words of fellow practitioner Fred Spier, “that places human history within the context of cosmic history, from the beginning of the universe up until life on Earth today.” Big history, it would seem, is not only a science, but the science, combining the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, geology, geography, biology, archaeology, anthropology, and history, not to mention the various sub-disciplines involved, while the “grand unifying theory” is not best expressed as an elegant mathematical