Big History
= " 'Big’ history treats events between the Big Bang and contemporary technological life on Earth as a singlenarrative, suggesting that cosmological, biological and social processes can be treated similarly". [1]
Contextual Quote
"In the Big Historical narrative what connects the unimaginably inhuman scales of subatomic, super-galactic space, and everything in between, is the progressive evolution of complex structure in our local region (Aunger 2007a, 2007b). The cosmic evolutionary understanding refers to this complex structure as the materialist hierarchy of interconnected forms (Smart 2008). Thus, in this framework what unites the ‘micro-macro’ worlds of the physical universe to the ‘middle’ world of the human symbolic orders is the ‘evolution of complexity’ in terms of diverse parts (elements) capable of connecting (relating) in higher coherent wholes. These wholes in turn exhibit structural forms with novel properties, from macromolecular chemical communities to the technological global human community. Consequently, the concrete theoretical interpretation of the Big History story relies on the structure of complexity science."
- Cadell Last [2]
Description
Cadell Last:
1.
"Big history is the study of the human past in relationship to the history of the universe (see Christian 2004; Spier 2011). This endeavor attempts to utilize the entire collective body of human knowledge in order to construct a deeper understanding of all natural processes(e.g. Aunger 2007a, b; Chaisson 2011a, b) from ‘‘Big Bang to Global Civilization’’ (e.g. Rodrigue et al. 2012). In contrast with the traditional attempt in physics to construct a ‘grand unified theory’ of the universe, big historians see the subject as providing the beginnings of a working ‘‘grand unified story’’ of the universe (Christian 2004, p. 4). From my perspective this goal should not be to eventually develop ‘one unchanging objective story’, but rather to develop the empirical framework for a story of our collective history that everyone can in turn relate to and utilize on a personal level. Thus big history has the opportunity to become simultaneously one story of our shared world as well as an infinite number of stories of how individuals can relate to that world. The usefulness of such a common origin story is that it can always be re-symbolized depending on contemporary sociopolitical context and scientific understanding. Consequently, big history offers humanity a deeper perspective and an opportunity for cosmic reflection in relation to the meaning of human life from an exploration of the processes that culminated in our existence."
2.
"Big History is a subject that formally emerged to meet and potentially satisfy a general desire for a symbolic space capable of holistically integrating fragmented scientific disciplines from cosmology to biology to human history (Christian 2017). Consequently, the ultimate goal of the study of Big History is to create a common language for all academic research so that seemingly disparate phenomena can be understood in an integrated framework (Spier 2017). From this perspective all disciplines, irrespective of their object of analysis on the various scales of reality, are all a part of the Big Historical narrative from ‘Big Bang to Global Civilization’ (Rodrigue et al. 2012). In this way, as Big History pioneer David Christian conjectures, the aim of Big History is to conceive of a ‘grand unified story’ capable of reclaiming the human desire for a total vision of reality (Christian 2004: 4). This desire has not been satisfied by the hyper-fragmented structure of the 20th century knowledge. Thus, Big History at its most fundamental ground seeks to construct a symbolic order in the form of a temporal narrative (past-present-future) that can reconcile a totalizing understanding of substance (Big Bang to global civilization)."
Characteristics
The Meta-Thresholds
International Big History Association:
"Beginning about 13.8 billion years ago, the story of the past is a coherent record that includes a series of great thresholds. Beginning with the Big Bang, Big History is an evidence-based account of emergent complexity, with simpler components combining into new units with new properties and greater energy flows.
The Beginning of Space and Time in Our Universe
In the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe is thought to have been so hot and dense that matter could only exist in the form of a soup of quarks and gluons. (What explains the Big Bang itself? We still need to figure this out to our satisfaction.) As the universe expanded and cooled, matter could take on new forms, including the first protons and neutrons, followed much later by neutral atoms. Though the early universe was almost perfectly uniform, slight non-uniformities existed from the beginning, and over cosmic time gravity has enhanced those non-uniformities, pulling matter from less dense regions into more dense regions. This has produced the large-scale structure of the universe that we see today, including galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters.
Within galaxies, gravity causes the collapse of gas clouds to form stars, which combine atomic nuclei to produce heavier elements through nuclear fusion. Before the first stars formed, the universe contained only hydrogen, helium, and small amounts of lithium (created in the first minutes after the Big Bang, when the universe as a whole was still hot enough to sustain fusion). But massive stars create carbon, oxygen, and all manner of heavier elements through fusion all the way up to iron. When these stars run out of fuel and explode as supernovae, the huge amounts of energy released often allow for the formation of even heavier elements like gold, uranium, and others. The heavy-element-enriched gas propelled outward by a supernova mixes with pre-existing gas and dust clouds, which may then collapse under gravity’s influence to form second-generation stars. Because first-generation stars had created heavy elements, these were available for gravity to form rocky or terrestrial planets.
The Beginning of Our Solar System and Earth
The formation of our own Sun and Earth took place about 4.6 billion years ago. The Solar System is located in one of the Milky Way’s outer spiral arms, known as the Orion Arm or Local Spur. We are between 25,000 and 28,000 light years from
the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which consists of a few hundred billion stars. We are traveling around that center at a rate of about 220 kilometers per second, completing one revolution every 225- 250 million years. Over the past 4.6 billion years, the Earth has seen many chapters in its own history, with changes in atmosphere, the appearance and continual reformation of land masses through plate tectonics, and many other transformations.
The Beginning and Evolution of Life
Elements and molecules on the Earth formed various combinations in a process of chemical evolution, although exactly how still eludes us. About 4 billion years ago, some of them formed membranes, gained access to additional chemicals and energy that became metabolism, and became able to reproduce with variation. What is called life then began its own highly uneven process of evolution, sometimes becoming more complex and diversified. Major transitions led to such features as cell nucleii, photosynthesis, intentional motion, multicellular specialization and cooperation, heads, backbones, four limbs, and many other features.
The rise of mammals following the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago led to the emergence of hominids. Eventually Homo sapiens emerged 200,000 years ago. Bipedal, largely hairless, large- brained, and with opposable thumbs, humans developed symbolic and imaginative language, inherited a social nature, and made ethics explicit.
The Beginning and Development of Culture
Through our culture, humans shaped some of the natural forces from which we emerged. We added hunting to scavenging and gathering. Beginning about 70,000 years ago, we left our African home and migrated throughout the globe, crossing Beringia into the Americas some 20,000 years ago (though the precise date is still heavily debated). We formed bands, kinship groups, villages, chiefdoms, cities, nations, and empires. Our species crossed other major thresholds with the emergence of agricultural states, the burning of fossil fuels, and the recent entrance into an information-rich, digital era.
We have fought many wars among ourselves and brought about environmental degradation and resource depletion. These and other problems threaten the quality and even survival of our species. We face a current crisis and a possible loss of complexity. Over 99% of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. No complex species is likely to survive intact for more than a few million years; we will be lucky if we survive that long."
(https://bighistory.org/whatisbighistory/)
History
History of Big History
Cadell Last:
"The study of big history as an intellectual tradition can be understood as both old and new. The subject is old because we have evidence of humans constructing complex physical and metaphysical narratives, and thinking about natural and supernatural explanations for the ‘totality’ of human existence in the world, for as long as we have evidence of writing. In fact, this narrative tradition may have been manifest in the human species from the dawn of complex material culture (North 2008), as all modern human groups develop cosmic cultural worldview structures (Blainey 2010), regardless of ecological organization. Consequently, the origin of our symbolic ‘totalizing’ behaviour is hypothesized to have emerged in concert with the emergence of full linguistic capabilities (Dunbar 2009), as the formation of human worldviews is deeply interconnected with the formation of the linguistic domain itself (Underhill 2009). The ramifications of this speculation suggests that ‘big history’ as a symbolic activity could in some form represent a cultural archetype of human worldviews that is at least as old as the emergence of modern humans (*150 to 200thousand years ago) (e.g. White et al. 2003; McDougall et al. 2005).However the early origins of academic big history in the modern Western tradition can be found in the construction of empirically based cosmic narratives. These types of histories from various scientific and philosophical perspectives started to emerge in the nineteenth century (e.g. Chambers 1844; Humboldt 1845; Fiske 1874; Spencer 1896) with the early development of modern evolutionary thinking (e.g. Darwin 1794; Lamarck 1809;Darwin 1859, 1871; Wallace 1871; Butler 1887). Early big history narratives—like many of the narratives constructed by religious, spiritual, and philosophical perspectives in pre-modern cultures—were always concerned with the human relationship to life and the cosmos as a whole. In these works central questions regarding the origins of the universe, life, and mind were often presented and explored, but the lack of a firm empirical grounding in the knowledge and theory of many subjects prevented the coherence of any testable scientific model. Thus the early study of big history, as well as the formulation of cosmic evolution, failed to mature or gain widespread academic credibility in the nineteenth century (Dick 2009b). Even throughout the early twentieth century there were only a few works that can be seen as important precursors to the contemporary subject (e.g .Bergson 1911; Wells 1920; Shapley 1930).The last half of the twentieth century was characterized by a noticeable increase in large-scale interdisciplinary big history work than ever before. In retrospect, the discovery of the big bang in 1964 appears fundamental and crucial to the development of big history as we know it today. The big bang allowed for a real beginning to a cosmological narrative, as well as an empirical way to understand the connections between the worlds of cosmology, physics, and astronomy, and the worlds of chemistry, geology, biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, cybernetics, economics, and history (e.g. McGill 1972;Sagan 1977; Cloud 1978; Jantsch 1980; Chaisson 1981; Poundstone 1985; Reeves 1985;Christian 1991). Also important were the first NASA images of the Earth from space [e.g. ‘‘Earthrise’’ (1968) and ‘‘Blue Marble’’ (1972)], which allowed humanity to see the whole planet for the first time, and reflect on our place within the cosmos with ‘new eyes’. In this historical intellectual environment astronomer Carl Sagan’s introduction of ‘‘The Cosmic Calendar’’ (1977, p. 8) marks an important symbolic moment; as this metaphor captured a clear pattern marked with a connected, directional, and accelerating set of cosmic ‘events’ from ‘particles to people’. The modern form of big history, in its attempt to become a rigorous academic discipline, is formulating a common conceptual framework that can be used to understand the whole of nature. Although no common framework currently exists contemporary researchers have tended to place particular emphasis on energy flow as a necessary component of physical change and structural complexity (Niele 2005; Spier 2005; Chaisson2011a, b), information processing as a source of functional variation and organizing complexity (Smith and Szathmary 1995; Corning 2005; Lloyd 2006), and complexity, which can be understood as a measure of the relationships between distinct but connected parts interacting within an integrated whole (Heylighen 2000; Davies 2013).In this big historical system energy, and specifically the rate of energy flow utilized for internal work, is seen as important in enabling higher associative interactions. This essentially means that material complexity typically comes at an energy cost, and measuring the density of energy flow that can be maintained by a physical object or living subject, gives us an approximate understanding of its structural complexity. Information also plays a dominant role in big history by allowing us to understand changing patterns in all physical processes and the functional ability of information processors to reduce uncertainty by increasing knowledge of their environment. From this perspective the emergence of information processors: entities that develop a subject-object relation, or input–output function, remain fundamental to understanding how functional organizations emerge to purposefully maintain and direct energy flows with greater autonomy from physical and chemical processes devoid of subjects. Consequently, there is a clear break or divide in the history of the universe between living systems (or autopoietic self-maintaining/organizing systems) and physical systems. Living systems have an internalized subjective relationship (self) to the larger object (environment) within which they exist, making their behaviour a process of goal and value formation emerging from that subject-object interaction/tension. Big historians also need to focus on the general evolution of all processes in the local universe. In this attempt there is a conceptual emphasis on a general systems framework, which understands the universe as a nested and hierarchical metasystem of organizations from the microscopic level (e.g. subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, etc.) to the macroscopic level (e.g. organisms, ecosystems, civilizations, etc.). In this general systems approach it is not the substrate that matters but rather the organization of substrates, i.e. the functional (cybernetic) process of the substrate to maintain organization, and the (evolutionary) mechanisms of its change over time. To understand the evolution of complexity within these systems emphasis is placed on differentiation as a property of subsystem variation within a larger metasystem (Heylighen 2000; Stewart 2000, 2014), as well as integration as a property of subsystem interconnection within a larger metasystem (Turchin1977; Smith and Szathmary 1995).
The evolutionary-cybernetic properties of differentiation and integration are necessary to understand the growth of complexity. This is because networked patterns of interconnected distinctions inherently characterize increasingly complex systems, irrespective of material substrate. These increasingly complex networks enable multi-level adaptive capabilities (i.e. higher organism-environment relations) exhibiting emergent properties that are completely absent at lower levels of organization. Thus by studying the way differentiation and integration have progressed via new forms of cooperation big historians can identify commonality in the evolutionary processes that enabled continuous local development of hierarchical ordered levels. From this conceptual framework we can start to build a comprehensive view of the local universe as a region of ever-complexifying relationships, which produce new levels of organization facilitated by higher levels of awareness, and consequently, new living system goals and values in relation to the cosmic object. In elucidating the complexifying connections between all historical processes we may be able to provide a foundation for understanding both our contemporary world and our potential future."
Discussion
Complexity Thresholds and Complexity Transitions
Cadell Last:
"(Through) complexity science ... we can read a story articulating the notion that our universe undergoes fundamental transformations described as ‘complexity thresholds’ (Christian 2008). Complexity thresholds occur when a form of structural organization emerges and stabilizes a novel regime of phenomena (a new level of the materialist hierarchy). Dominant descriptions of these complexity transitions have been grounded in either an informational base (universal complexity as best understood in algorithmic terms) (Baker 2013), or with an energetic base (universal complexity as best understood in thermodynamic terms) (Spier 2005). In these respective frames we seek to understand the way in which the universe generally processes information and the way in which the universe generally organizes energetic flows of matter.
The most common linear demarcation of these information-energy complexity thresholds into a universal narrative includes the following fundamental distinctions:
(MB: I adapted line 8 and 9)
- 1 Origin of the universe (spacetime)
- 2 First stars and galaxies (heterogeneity)
- 3 Formation of chemical elements (diversification)
- 4 Formation of Earth, solar system (localization)
- 5 Emergence of life (self-reference)
- 6 Emergence of humanity (narrativization)
- 7 Transition to agriculture (civilization)
- 8 Modern industrial revolution (national to international)
(note MB: I would add
- 9: informational (global to cosmo-local)
Universal Internalization and its Role in Human and Cosmic History
Cadell Last:
"Throughout this temporal history of complexity thresholds, the universe has started to ‘internalize’ itself through a ‘progressive’ synthesis or sublation of itself. In order to capture this process of universal ‘internalization’ we can say that the complexifying universe started to form a minimal level of internal self-relation (Maturana and Varela 1991). What are the consequences of this progressive internalization? How is it connected to complexification? How should we understand the complexity of narrative given its irreducibly internal nature? Indeed, the very emergence of a Big History community represents this synthetic sublation process of internalization where the universe attempts to conceptualize itself as a totality. What we seek here to do is put a narrative emphasis on the consequences of this internalization motion as something of significance to future Big Historical research.
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The agricultural and industrial revolutions are not events constituted in an observerless, narrative-less realm, but irreducibly within and by observers constituted by narrative self-action. The difference here for the Big Historical future is that for Complexity Threshold 9 the observers are ‘meta-aware’ of their narrative position in the Big Historical drama.
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Big Historical interiorization during complexification suggests that complexification is somehow related to interiorization, of the universe becoming increasingly conscious of itself (Teilhard de Chardin 1955). Consequently, the passive reflection correspondence between human epistemological constructs (i.e., Big History narrative) and the ontological nature of reality (i.e., physical evolution of universe) becomes simply untenable in relation to the future of the present moment. For example, in contemporary science the inadequacy of passive epistemological reflection becomes unavoidable when reflecting on the future of conscious and technolo- gical evolution (Kurzweil 2005), the connections between physics and computation (Lloyd 2006), and a future physics dependent on observation (Smolin 2001). In all of these contemporary scientific domains we are dealing with a situation where epistemological constructs or narratives must be inscribed into the ontological nature of the thing under observation.
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How does the modern global subject who has internalized the whole of nature change modern global society? Is there a thinkable universality that emerges that actually transcends mere reductions to an observer tethered to scientific reflection correspondence? In this perspective of Big Historical internalization the conflict or tension between the modernist scientific constructionist view seeking universal totality and the postmodern critical view seeking to deconstruct universal totality seem to gain new dimensions.
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Past humans engaged in symbolic totalization (e.g., Biblical, Newtonian, Marxist, etc.), and we are continuing this evolution of symbolic totalization with new/different content (in the Big Historical sense, the content of cosmic evolution and the theory of complexity science). Thus, when the observer is within the system we must attempt to think the psychoanalytic ‘metastructure’ of the symbolic order. In this metastructure there is no unifying ‘metalanguage’ between particular historical subjectivities that would unify knowledge of being.
The narrativistic present is somehow related to ethical-political directives (or backgrounds) that must be stabilized across time. These ethical directives/backgrounds are by no means relativistic, but rather, absolute (Jameson 2013). Indeed, what we often find in the ethical-political directives of symbolic orders is often an invariant desire expressed under conceptual unity independent of particular historical instantiations of narrative frame (i.e., Biblical, Newtonian, Marxist, etc.).
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The Biblical narrative centers subjectivity in relation to a past ‘Eden’ and a future ‘God’, the Newtonian narrative centers subjectivity in relation to an ‘Eternal Spacetime’ (with no beginning and no end), the Marxist narrative centers subjectivity in relation to a past ‘Primitive Communism’ and a future ‘Global Communism’. This is not to say that any of these narrativistic temporalities are literally true in a materialist sense (i.e., ‘Eden/God’, ‘Eternal Spacetime’, ‘Primitive/World Communism’). However, it is the case that these narrativistic temporalities are metaphorical truths for subjectivity that have stabilized action in the realm of history. Furthermore, these metaphorical truths have had real material consequences in the establishment of Christian, Physicalist, and Communist societies.
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Do Big Historians actually operate on this ethical political background direc- tive? Do they reflect deeply enough on this ethical political background directive? Are there alternative possible ethical political background directives? These are what we may call ‘higher order’ internalization issues of the symbolic order.
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We cannot think of contemporary Big History ‘objectively’ independent of its possible failure to reconcile planetary civilization and help instantiate a totally other observationally narrativized world. It is in this sense that we think of Big History as not simply a story about being but a story that constitutes (this temporal era of) being itself. It is in this sense that the Big History narrative is conceived as an integral part of the larger conceptual becoming of the concept itself. Can Big History think this concept in its becoming?
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Towards the possibility to think this within Big History we may note that in past complexity thresholds (e.g., 6 and 7) there have not only been quantitative increases in information processing (Delahaye and Vidal 2016) and energy flows (Chaisson 2011b), but also qualitative changes in internal experience (Thompson 2010; Deacon 2011).
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In this sense we call attention to higher order evolution of the symbolic order. Symbolic orders create and transform the processual content of our future through a multiplicity of frames of reference.
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Can we consider the epistemological orders of cybernetics as a structuring moment for an ontology of the symbolic ?
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The higher order focus here becomes self-action on the level of historical totality. In the inclusivity of each order we must reflectively take into consideration more observation and more of the consequences of observation internal to the system. The external world thus loses its objective quality and gains a complex matrix of multiple internalizations. However, as mentioned, this complex matrix is not ‘infinite’ in its possible viable interpretations, but rather must possess a metastructure that limits the range of interpretation.
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There may not be a metalanguage unifying all modern global subjects but rather a unified metastructural matrix of symbolic desire expressed temporally.
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We see that the problem of the ‘true’ or ‘real’ Other/Background is more and more a feature of the symbolic order in terms of what is often referred to as ‘post-Truth politics’.
Box: Higher Orders of Symbolic Evolution:
- 1 In the first order of cybernetics we are attempting to think the external physical world as it is in itself. For contemporary Big History this would be something like the ‘big bang to global civilization’ narrative
=> Physical sciences; Knowledge of the world
- 2 In the second order we are thinking of the observer's relation to the external physical world as it is in itself. For our purposes this would be a particular Big History researcher's relation to the Big History narrative
=> Deconstruction, Critique; Knowledge of our knowledge of the world
- 3 In the third order we are thinking of the observer's relation to its own internal states of mind including conscious images, visions, symbols, and so forth. For our purposes this would be the genesis of representational modes to relate to self and world
=> Psychoanalysis, Psychology; Self-knowledge
- 4 In the fourth order we are thinking of the observer's relation to the social-historical world and the way in which a self-narrative structures or centers its conception of time and direction of action. For our purposes this would be the self-action of a Big Historian or a Big History community
=> History, Sociology; Self-knowledge, its action and consequences
- 5 In the fifth order we are thinking of the totality of observational relation to the social-historical world and the way in which the totality of self-narratives structure or center conception of time and direction of action. For our purposes this would be the self-action of all historical narrativization
=> Religion, Philosophy; Self-society knowledge, its action and consequences "
The Thermodynamic Hypothesis Behind Big History
Robert Aunger:
"What brings together events as disparate as the origin of stars, the French Revolution and the invention of windmills into a single analysis? Christian argues that the grand sweep of events, linked together in a seamless explanatory framework, provides intellectual satisfaction and a richer context to human experience. However, beyond such aesthetic concerns, investigations at this scale are important because historical laws might be detected in this expanse of time: big history can serve as the foundation for ‘big theory’. Where exactly might such historical laws be found? Certainly, historians have long been preoccupied with identifying those events which have a special significance in determining the subsequent course of history. However, a rigorous method for selecting these events from among the myriad possibilities has been lacking. As a result, historians have been limited to the idiosyncratic identification of ‘landmark’ events, or to putting boundaries around temporally and spatially clustered events (the ‘periodization’ of history). These practices have fallen into disrepute in some quarters, being characterized as an attempt to break a continuously emergent process into arbitrary pieces (such as the ‘Renaissance’), which then acquire an unnatural grip on the mind. Nevertheless, the first step toward historical laws must be the discovery of a rigorous foundation for organizing historical processes into analytical units larger than individual events; otherwise one is left with chronologies that are simply ‘one damn thing after another. At a minimum, historical narratives ascribe cause-and-effect relationships between events. The dependence of effects on the prior occurrence of causes indicates that historical processes only run in one temporal direction: they are not reversible. A rigorous expectation for irreversibility can be found in thermodynamics: historical processes are irreversible because, at a macro-scale, entropy increases over time. The universe was very hot at the time of the Big Bang, but has progressively become cooler as it has grown larger, leaving less energy available to perform useful work as time passes, meaning that previous kinds or levels of order cannot be maintained. At the same time, in the grand sweep of big history, the opposite pattern of events is obvious: a trend toward the production of increasingly complex, but localized systems. For example, organisms are more complex organisations than stars, and social systems are more complex than organisms. From a thermodynamic perspective, temporal order (i.e., history) thus requires spatial order, which implies that historical systems must be out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Any law-like description of major events in macro-history must therefore be centrally concerned with how increasing levels of thermodynamic disequilibrium can occur and be sustained. Big history can thus serve as the focus for the discovery of laws describing major transitions in the direction of historical change that account for this increase in the maximum degree of structural complexity over time, despite the imperative for thermodynamic entropy to increase."
(https://www.academia.edu/3007922/Major_transitions_in_big_history)
More information
Aunger R. 2007a. Major Transitions in ‘Big’ History. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 74: 1137–1163.
Aunger R. 2007b. A Rigorous Periodization of ‘Big’ History. Technological Forecas- ting and Social Change 74: 1164–1178.
Baker D. 2013. 1050. The Darwinian Algorithm and a Possible Candidate for a ‘Unifying Theme’ of Big History. Evolution: Development within Big History, Evolutionary and World-System Paradigms / Ed. by L. E. Grinin, and A. V. Korotayev, pp. 235–248. Volgograd: Uchitel.
Christian D. 2004. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Christian D. 2008. Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company.
Christian D. 2017. What is Big History? Journal of Big History 1(1): 4–19.
Christian D., Brown C., and Benjamin C. 2011. Big History: Between Nothing and Everything. New York, NY: McGill-Hill Education.
Last C. 2017a. Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations: Cosmic Evolution, Atechnogenesis, and Technocultural Civilization. Foundations of Science 22(1): 39–124. DOI: 10.1007/s10699-015-9434-y.
Last C. 2017b. Global Commons in the Global Brain. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 114: 48–64. DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.013.
Last C. 2018. Cosmic Evolutionary Philosophy and a Dialectical Approach to Technological Singularity. Information 9(4): 78. DOI: 10.3390/info9040078.
Spier F. 2005. How Big History Works: Energy Flows and the Rise and Demise of Complexity. Social Evolution & History 4: 87–135.
Spier F. 2010. Big History and the Future of Humanity. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Spier F. 2017. On the Pursuit of Academic Research Across All the Disciplines. Journal of Big History 1(1): 20–39.