TTC-Video: Big History

Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity Course No. 8050 (48 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Taught by David Christian San Diego State University D. Phil, Oxford University Imagine you are traveling through time. Consider the following episodes: * At 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe suddenly appears, growing from the size of an atom to the size of a galaxy in a fraction of a second. * At 10 billion years ago, hydrogen atoms and helium atoms fuse at the center of a supernova to create the building blocks of the physical world. * At 4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of matter collapses to produce a star—our Sun. Earth and the other planets in our solar system form out of the remaining bits of matter swirling around the new star. * At 67 million years ago, an asteroid collides with the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, and leaves territory open for the rise of a minor order of organisms, the early mammals. * At 100,000–60,000 years ago, a species of hominines—bipedal ape-like creatures— begins to move out of its home territory in Africa and into the Asian continent. * Today, the descendants of those first hominines—homo sapiens—live in nearly every ecological niche. We fly through the air in planes, communicate instantaneously over immense distances, and develop theories about the creation of the Universe. Each of these scenarios is just one episode in an ever-evolving story: the history of everything. Its a story youll hear—in its monumental entirety—in Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity. Taught by historian David Christian, Big History offers a unique opportunity to view human history in the context of the many histories that surround it. Over the course of 48 thought-provoking lectures, hell serve as your guide as you traverse the sweeping expanse of cosmic history—13.7 billion years of it—starting with the big bang and traveling through time and space to the present moment.
A Grand Synthesis of Knowledge Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses—cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history—fit together? Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the worlds great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian. This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past.
Eight \"Thresholds\" To tell this epic, Professor Christian organizes the history of creation into eight \"thresholds.\" Each threshold marks a point in history when something truly new appeared and forms never before seen began to arise. Starting with the first threshold, the creation of the Universe, Professor Christian traces the developments of new, more complex entities, including: * The creation of the first stars (threshold 2) * The origin of life (threshold 5) * The development of the human species (threshold 6) * The moment of modernity (threshold 8). In the final lectures, youll even gain a glimpse into the future as you review speculations offered by scientists about where our species, our world, and our Universe may be heading.
Getting the \"Big\" Picture While you may have heard parts of this story before in courses on geology, history, anthropology, biology, cosmology, and other scholarly disciplines, Big History provides more than just a recap. This course will expand the scope of your perspective on the past and alter the way you think about history and the world around you. \"Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that youll find in other types of historical teaching and writing,\" explains Professor Christian. \"For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. Theyll zoom past in a blur. Youll barely see them. Instead, what were going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. ... Well be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past.\" Thanks to this grand perspective, youll uncover the remarkable parallels and connections among disciplines that remain to be explored when you view history on a large scale. How is the creation of stars like the building of cities? How is the big bang like the invention of agriculture? These are the kinds of connections youll find yourself pondering as you undergo the grand shift in perspective afforded by Big History.
Fascinating Facts Along the way, youll encounter intriguing tidbits that put the grand scale of this story in perspective, such as: * The entire expanse of human civilization—5,000 years—makes up a mere 2 percent of the human experience. * Approximately 98 percent of human history occurred before the invention of agriculture. * All the matter we know of in the Universe is likely to be no more than 1 billionth of the actual matter that was originally created. * The Earths Moon was probably created by a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet. * At present, we cannot drill deeper than about 7 miles into the Earth, which is just 0.2% of the distance to the center (4,000 miles away). * Between 1000 C.E. and 2000 C.E., human populations rose by a factor of 24. * Traveling in a jet plane, it would take 5 million years to get from our solar system to the next nearest star.
The Story We Tell about Ourselves \"To understand ourselves,\" says Professor Christian, \"we need to know the very large story, the largest story of all.\" And that, perhaps, is one of the greatest benefits of Big History: It provides a thought-provoking way to help us understand our own place within the Universe. From humankinds place within the context of evolutionary history to our impact on the larger biosphere—both now and in our species past—this course offers a broad yet nuanced examination of our place in creation. It also poses a profound question: Is it possible that our species is the only entity created by the Universe with the capacity to ponder its mysteries? There is, perhaps, no more profound question to ask, and no better guide on this quest for understanding than Professor Christian. A pioneer in this approach to understanding history, Professor Christian has made big history his personal project for more than two decades. Working with experts in a variety of fields, he designed and taught some of the first big history courses, and has published widely on the topic. Accept his invitation to get the big picture on Big History, and prepare for a journey through time and across space, from the first moments of existence to the distant reaches of the far future.
Course Lecture Titles 01. What Is Big History? 02. Moving across Multiple Scales 03. Simplicity and Complexity 04. Evidence and the Nature of Science 05. Threshold 1—Origins of Big Bang Cosmology 06. How Did Everything Begin? 07. Threshold 2—The First Stars and Galaxies 08. Threshold 3—Making Chemical Elements 09. Threshold 4—The Earth and the Solar System 10. The Early Earth—A Short History 11. Plate Tectonics and the Earths Geography 12. Threshold 5—Life 13. Darwin and Natural Selection 14. The Evidence for Natural Selection 15. The Origins of Life 16. Life on Earth—Single-celled Organisms 17. Life on Earth—Multi-celled Organisms 18. Hominines 19. Evidence on Hominine Evolution 20. Threshold 6—What Makes Humans Different? 21. Homo sapiens—The First Humans 22. Paleolithic Lifeways 23. Change in the Paleolithic Era 24. Threshold 7—Agriculture 25. The Origins of Agriculture 26. The First Agrarian Societies 27. Power and Its Origins 28. Early Power Structures 29. From Villages to Cities 30. Sumer—The First Agrarian Civilization 31. Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions 32. The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made 33. Long Trends—Expansion and State Power 34. Long Trends—Rates of Innovation 35. Long Trends—Disease and Malthusian Cycles 36. Comparing the World Zones 37. The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era 38. Threshold 8—The Modern Revolution 39. The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500–1350 40. The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700 41. Breakthrough—The Industrial Revolution 42. Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900 43. The 20th Century 44. The World That the Modern Revolution Made 45. Human History and the Biosphere 46. The Next 100 Years 47. The Next Millennium and the Remote Future 48. Big History—Humans in the Cosmos

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